PC gamers are beginning to lose their patience with juggling multiple clients when they just want to find and launch their games. Trying to figure out which EA games were shifted from Steam to Origin, tackling Uplay, and remembering which games are now Epic Store exclusives has been a cause of frustration for PC players, but there may be a solution. Enter GOG Galaxy 2.0, which promises to unify all of your PC games in one very pretty client.
I began using GOG Galaxy when The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt first came out and while I loved the DRM-free capabilities, the platform itself was buggy and generally not a great user experience. But GOG Galaxy 2.0 looks to be a vastly improved edition, and as the beta isn’t open to everybody yet, you can get an inside look in our feature video above.
The first thing which is really apparent is that GOG Galaxy 2.0 is gorgeous. The visual and functional overhaul is impressive and heavily customisable. Importing your games creates an insightful and intuitive overview of your collective PC gaming library, and your PlayStation and Xbox libraries for that matter. Currently it’s not possible to import any Nintendo games, but for games on every other platform you’re able to view your achievements, hours played, and friend’s stats. You can also explore your entire gaming library using filters and search parameters.
The closed beta doesn’t contain every planned feature and as it’s receiving constant updates, there are certain things that don’t work as intended. There are general bugs, some missing trophies and progress, and Galaxy can occasionally lose its connection to certain clients–but these problems don’t outweigh the advantages of the platform, especially how it enables the integration of all your clients into one. This requires some setup as you need to log into each of your clients to connect them to Galaxy, but if you don’t consider Captcha software to be your arch nemesis like I do, it’s pretty painless.
Finishing the process rewards you with a comprehensive gold mine of your own data and a client that will never have you scratching your head trying to remember what platform Mass Effect 2 is on ever again. Once you link your platforms your library auto-populates with art, playtime stats, and achievements. There are gaps where art is missing, but icon and background art can be imported straight from your computer.
You can boot games from GOG Galaxy 2.0 but you do still need to wait for the original client to get running in the background. My wait times varied by platform, with Steam proving to be the fastest and least intrusive third-party platform to integrate. Some clients like Origin and Uplay still insist on popping up on your desktop when you try to launch a game from either platform, but a feature is in the works which will automatically close clients when exiting an associated game. Galaxy does let you install games straight from the launcher, but of course if you want to buy the latest Epic Store exclusive, for instance, you’ll still need to take yourself over to its specific store to buy it.
The only time you’ll really run into a problem is if you haven’t enabled your clients and games to auto-update. I don’t auto-update my platforms or games because I still remember getting yelled at for using up all our family’s data when I was a teenager living at home so booting a game like The Division 2 can mean waiting for Uplay to update and run and then waiting for the game itself to update and run. Bonus points if Galaxy also required an update at launch. Fortunately, sifting through the piles of data in GOG Galaxy 2.0 to find out which game I’ve logged the most time in–145 hours in Divinity: Original Sin II apparently–is a perfectly good time waster while waiting on those progress bars. Generally, you’ll want to make sure you are auto-updating so you don’t run into this problem, in which case you should sail right into the game with far less waiting around. I did most of my gaming offline and away from distribution platforms until the 2000s so while GOG can’t paint me a perfect data-riffic picture of all the weekends I spent playing Heroes of Might & Magic III or Age of Empires II from dawn until dusk, there is still plenty of stats to check out.
It’s worth noting that GOG Galaxy 2.0 isn’t the first all-in-one launcher. Playnite is an open source library manager that imports games from all of your platforms into one and while by all accounts it does the trick, GOG Galaxy 2.0 has some special additions under its pretty hood. Galaxy includes a bookmark function that lets you pin games, genres, or custom tagged groups to your sidebar. Custom tags can be created instantly and you can group together whatever strange amalgamation of games you choose. There are also plenty of UI options like filtering by platform, operating system, tags, or whether or not the game is installed. The platform is also open-source allowing for community-made plug-ins which should enable clever users to expand the breadth of what GOG Galaxy 2.0 is capable of.
Overall the process is as streamlined and well-executed as you’d expect from a beta. You can hide games in your library, which I did for trials, and if you own a game on multiple platforms it’ll combine the stats under one page for you. As a space to hold your half a dozen gaming libraries it’s entirely sufficient and missing trophies or sluggish boot times from certain platforms don’t take away from how much easier it makes modern PC gaming. Galaxy is also intending to integrate your friends from other platforms into the client which CD Project says could extend to sending a message to a friend on PS4 who receives it instantly, but this functionality is yet to be implemented.
A handful of years ago I couldn’t imagine GOG Galaxy working for me as a replacement for Steam, despite how much I loved the DRM-free and offline play options, but Galaxy 2.0 is a vastly different beast. It may not have the library to replace your existing platforms, but the relative ease with which it unifies all your clients means that, at least for me, playing my PC games through GOG Galaxy 2.0 from now on is looking to be a no brainer.
Fortnite Battle Royale is preparing to launch Season 10, and has been setting the stage for the changes to come. That will mean a new Battle Pass, changes to the map, and new gameplay mechanics. It’s a lot to keep up with all at once, so we’ve compiled everything we know so far.
When Will Fortnite Season 10 Start?
Typically a Fortnite season lasts 10 weeks, which would have put the start date for Season 10 within the week of July 15. This season is instead planned to last until August 1, which may be due to the timing of the Fortnite World Cup. Epic may have wanted to reserve any large map changes until after the competition had ended.
This will also allow the game to launch its Season 10 during or just after its planned Birthday Event, which will offer special rewards and challenges. Items like birthday cakes and presents will also be scattered around the map, offering health/shield regen and special loot drops.
How Much Will the Fortnite Season 10 Battle Pass Cost?
As usual, the Season 10 Battle Pass will most likely cost the usual price of 950 V-Bucks. You can buy a bundle of 1,000 V-Bucks for $10/£8, making that roughly the price point for a Battle Pass that will last over the next few months during Season 10. The Battle Pass entitles you to challenges and their associated cosmetic rewards.
What’s in the Fortnite Season 10 Battle Pass?
Season 9 is ongoing, and as usual a big world event has started to set the stage for things to come. This time it was a giant battle pitting a mechanized bear against a huge monster that took place on Saturday, July 20. The robot was apparently built to fend off the monster, and when it showed up the mech automatically activated. The mech powered up by breaking into the Loot Lake vault and taking a powerful orb, then drew a giant sword to defeat the monster and left the monster’s body and the sword behind.
What all this could mean for Season 10 is still mysterious, however. The themes for the seasonal changeovers are often surprising, so the next season could have nothing to do with mechs, monsters, or giant swords at all. Based on past seasonal events, this stage-setting probably created conditions for some unexpected consequences that will factor into the next big map change
EA Access, the subscription service from publishing giant Electronic Arts, launches today, July 24, for PlayStation 4. It’s been a long time coming, as the service premiered all the way back in 2014 on Xbox One. A countdown clock on EA’s website reveals exactly when EA Access go lives–5 PM PT on July 24.
EA Access on PS4 will be available for $5 USD/month or $30 USD/year. Included with your membership is access to a growing catalog of games, known as the Vault. The library includes a number of big, popular, and well-received games such as Titanfall 2, Madden NFL 19, and Battlefield V, among many others.
Additionally, members get 10 percent off all digital EA games and content. For full-priced games, this brings the price down from $60 USD to $54 USD. Finally, members get access to the Play First trials, which normally provide 10 hours of early access to new EA titles prior to their official release.
Comedian Chris Rock is rebooting/re-imagining the horror movie franchise Saw, and now it’s been confirmed that the film is coming sooner than expected. According to Deadline, Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures have moved the release ahead multiple months. The movie is now expected to hit theatres on May 15, 2020 instead of its previously announced October 23, 2020 release date.
This is a change for the Saw franchise, as the eight previous movies were all released in October to capitalize on the spooky vibe of the Halloween season.
The movie is described as “Saw on steroids,” but it’s not clear what that means. The idea came from Rock, who will play a police detective investigating horrible murders. Samuel L. Jackson will also star in the movie as the father of Rock’s character. Max Minghella plays Rock’s police partner, while Marisol Nichols is playing the police captain boss of Rock’s character.
Saw creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell are executive producers on the new Saw, which is directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II). Pete Goldfinder and Josh Stolberg, who wrote the script for the 2017 Saw movie Jigsaw, return to write the script for the new Saw.
The first Saw premiered in 2004, and seven sequels followed in seven consecutive years, with Jigsaw rounding out the bunch in 2017.
Daniel Brühl, the actor who will once again play Baron Zemo in Marvel’s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier for Disney +, has given fans outside of Marvel’s San Diego Comic-Con 2019 panel their first look at Zemo’s iconic purple mask.
Brühl took to Instagram to show off Zemo’s new look following his debut in Captain America: Civil War, saying “,,Longing, Rusted, Seventeen, Daybreak, Furnace, Nine, Benign, Homecoming, One, Freight Car.” Zemo is getting ready #SDCC @comic_con @marvel @marvelstudios.”
As previously mentioned, Brühl interrupted the Marvel Studios panel in Hall H at SDCC as Winter Soldier’s list of trigger words appeared on big screens.
Quentin Taratino’s ninth movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is opening in theatres this weekend. The movie stars a long list of huge names, but viewers won’t get to see James Marsden as originally promised. Collider confirmed that Marsden played the actor Burt Reynolds in the film, but the part was cut for the theatrical version.
Reynolds himself was set to play George Spahn, the owner of the Spahn Ranch and an associate of the Manson family. However, after Reynolds passed away, Tarantino recast the role with Bruce Dern.
Marsden confirmed in June 2018 that he had a role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but it wasn’t said what it was until this week. Collider’s editor, Jeff Sneider, wondered aloud if Marsden’s scene or scenes were cut from the movie following Reynolds’ death. Whatever the case, Reynolds gets “Special Thanks” in the movie’s end credits, according to Collider.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio as the fading actor Rick Dalton and Brad Pitt as his stunt double; Margot Robbie portrays Sharon Tate. Daktona Fanning, Lena Dunham, Timothy Olyphant, Margaret Qualley, Austin Butler, Kurt Russell, and Damon Herriman also feature. Luke Perry also appears in the movie in his last screen role following his death.
“It succeeds immensely at being a fairy tale–a recounting of a time and place, an attempt to capture the essence of Hollywood’s golden age, one that came to an end in 1969–but, maybe for Tarantino, never really ended at all,” reviewer Michael Rougeau said.
In other news, it was recently reported that DiCaprio was paid $15 million USD–or $5 million USD below his normal per-movie fee–to star in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. However, he could end up making $45 million USD or more when all is said and done.
The battle royale genre, or mode depending on how you think about it, continues to be immensely popular. Franchises like Call of Duty and Battlefield have introduced battle royale modes, while battle royale games themselves like Fortnite and Apex Legends continue to dominate. One franchise that isn’t jumping on the battle royale bandwagon for now is Gears of War.
Multiplayer director Ryan Cleven told GameSpot that Gears 5 won’t have a battle royale mode at launch. Developer The Coalition are “big fans” of battle royale as a genre, he said, adding that the studio will listen to feedback from fans and consider what to add after release.
“Gears 5 does not include a battle royale mode,” Cleven said. “We’re big fans of the battle royale genre, but we would want to ensure we bring a battle royale mode to Gears in a meaningful way. We’re actively listening to our Gears community and will look to further evolve our game modes based on player feedback post-launch.”
The Coalition boss Rod Fergusson previously explained to IGN that the studio doesn’t want to “chase” the battle royale genre just for the sake of getting in on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, Cleven told IGN, “As a fan of the genre I would love to see it, but bringing the intimate combat of Gears to the open kind of organic encounters of a battle royale is difficult. They’re two very different modes of combat. It’s not that it’s impossible. It’s just to do it right would require really focusing on it.”
While Gears 5 doesn’t have battle royale, the game features a series of other modes. These include the standard Versus multiplayer, along with Horde, Escape, and campaign–all of which can be played with friends. Not only that, but there is cross-play support between Xbox One and PC for them.
Gears 5 launches in September, but The Coalition is inviting people to play early to test the Versus multiplayer mode through technical tests. The first was held last weekend, and the second one begins July 26.
