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It turns out those completely unbelievable rumors about a Borderlands 2 DLC bridging the gap between part 2 and the upcoming part 3 are entirely true. Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary is the first DLC for Borderlands 2 since Sir Hammerlock vs. the Son of Crawmerax back in 2014 – and, for the next 30 days, it’s free. The promotional nature of it initially had me a little concerned Fight for Sanctuary would feel rushed and/or half-assed, but I'm here to tell you it's not. It's great and I can't stop playing it. The 10-hour story picks up immediately after the events at the end of Borderlands 2. Gearbox courteously warns new players of the potential spoilers, but honestly, this DLC isn't for new players anyway. If you're like me and you've switched platforms since playing the original Borderlands 2 (in my case from Xbox 360 to PC), Gearbox has your back: You can roll a new level-30 character using any of the Borderlands 2 Vault Hunters and dive right into the Fight for Sanctuary. Fight for Sanctuary's main story is, shockingly, all about fighting for Sanctuary. (I know, it really took me by surprise.) New baddie Colonel Hector of the New Pandora Army is the main antagonist here, and his goal is to create a paradise for the men of his unit. His is a woeful tale of betrayal at the hands of the Dahl Corporation, but that doesn't mean Hector isn't a total dick, because he is: his plan involves infecting Pandora with a virus that turns the enemies you're so used to fighting (psychos, brutes, skags, etc.) into half-plant, half-zombie killing machines; think the Flood from Halo and you have a good idea of what you're up against. New baddie Colonel Hector of the New Pandora Army is the main antagonist here. They fight similarly to their non-infected counter parts: rushing and melee attacking or blasting you from a distance. They do have more in the way of slag and corrosive attacks, but thankfully they're even more susceptible to fire than regular flesh bags. You also fight against Hector's troops, which are much tougher and unrelenting versions of the heavily armed and shielded Hyperion soldiers you've fought before – and they have medics. You know how one of the loading screens in Borderlands 2 says you'll "learn to hate" the repair bots? The medics are even more aggravating. If there's a single medic in the group you have to take him out first or he'll heal all the damage you're doing to his fellow soldiers; if there are two medics in a group, they can heal each other. While they're obnoxious, it's a great way to drive home the cooperative focus of the Borderlands franchise: two or more players can divide and conquer, knocking out the medics more or less simultaneously. Speaking of frustrating but fair, with my newly minted level-30 Krieg the difficulty in Fight for Sanctuary feels just where it should be. When playing solo it was just a little tougher than I expected, which is a good thing. It's not frustrating, but it's definitely not a cakewalk. Boss battles are tough, but again, far from impossible. Oh right: bosses! There are plenty of new bosses here, some for the main story and some for the plentiful side missions. There's even a new raid boss who 100% requires assistance from your friends, since he scaled four levels above my character the first few times I made a solo attempt to take him down. (I didn't even make a scratch.) It looks like he tops out at 40, but even trying at level 38, I didn't last long. 3 OF 23 Reviewed by Charles Onyett December 10, 2009 While it'd be great to get some downloadable content that adds in character class skills, heaps of new items, bumps up the level cap, or builds in more interesting and complex quest and encounter mechanics, what's presented here is a guaranteed good time. The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned is a well-made and entertaining piece of content, giving Borderlands fans a chance to sink bullets into undead flesh in new environments and with some additional quest goals. The expansion also offers stronger story elements, something mostly propped up with wacky humor and nonsense, which is quite fitting considering the context of a zombie outbreak and ludicrous amount of loot and bullets and death. While it doesn't alter the core of Borderlands in any dramatic kind of way, it is one of the most vividly characterized zones. Considering the strength of the gameplay formula and th Why Are There So Many Songs About Rainbows? The Fight for Sanctuary also brings the loot. Remember when a modder found a rainbow rarity in the most recent Borderlands 2 update? Well, you no longer need a mod to open them up because rainbow rarity is here, and it's awesome. Every rainbow item shimmers and sparkles like a glitter-bombed oil slick. It's lovely. I love them. I squealed in delight when my brain realized the loot I was staring at was new and shiny. Instead of just being described as rainbow colored in the description text, these rainbow items are actually covered in a glistening rainbow sheen – and the category isn’t just limited to guns. There are rainbow grenades, too, and I even found a rainbow skin for my Catch-a-Ride Runner. Every rainbow item shimmers and sparkles like a glitter-bombed oil slick. It's lovely. I love them. My rainbow grenade is maybe my favorite, and it’s the most useful item in my inventory. It bursts outward with a pinwheel of constant and cleansing fire, tossing flaming explosives around its perimeter in a ring of pure annihilation. It's breathtaking, really, and since the majority of the new enemies are infected with the plant virus, fire is more effective than ever before in stopping them. I love you, rainbow grenade. After completing the Fight for Sanctuary I went back and played some of the older DLC to see what carried over. I didn't encounter any rainbow items, but the results are inconclusive – maybe there’re out there somewhere. But for right now, it looks like the only place to find (and farm) them is in the Fight for Sanctuary DLC. The good news is you can bring your shiny, glistening rainbow gear with you when you play the original game and any of the older DLC. It should help make your friends jealous. The real storyline meat comes from diving into the side missions. As far as the story goes, the main mission does a pretty good job setting the stage for Borderlands 3, but the real meat comes from diving into the side missions. It’s amazingly thorough at of touching on the fate of nearly every important character in Borderlands 2, and I even found an ECHO with information describing one of the new Vault Hunters. That leads me to believe there are at least three more character-specific ECHOs out there somewhere to uncover. I also found quite a few ECHOs from Colonel Hector, filling out his story, as well as some others. Oh, and there's even a character from Tales From the Borderlands playing a big role in the side missions. THE VERDICT I'm in love with the concept of the Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary DLC. It’s a novel way to set the stage for Borderlands 3 after seven years of waiting, and it does so in a really fun and interesting way. It works on so many different levels: it gives long-time fans something new, gets lapsed fans excited and gets everyone hyped on Borderlands. The new rainbow rarity, sidequests, and secrets to unlock give it some legs beyond the main story, but more importantly, all of the signature humor, looting, and other Borderlands 2 goodness is intact. Being able to roll in with an appropriately leveled character is awesome for people who've since changed systems since they first played. But best of all, it's more Borderlands 2.

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¤ Name[/nickname]: morad ¤ Age:16 ¤ Country: Bosina ¤ Occupation: nothing :v ¤ A short description about you: Addicted to music and i love Football ¤ How did you found out Csblackdevil Community: .-. ¤ Favorite games: pubg mobile and Counter cs.16 and Free fire, CSGO ¤ Favorite server [community only]:ThunderZM ¤ A picture of you:-

If you are a user of an Apple gadget from the past few years, you enjoy the presence of True Tone. This option increases the accuracy of the displayed colors and reports in real-time light to the ambient light. If you use True Tone on iPhone, you'd better know how to disable it. Apple introduced True Tone for the first time in the iPad Pro series introduced in 2017. In the same year, it also ported it to iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and iPhone X. In 2018, it reached the MacBook Pro. No matter what gadget you use, True Tone works the same way. Using a range of ambient light sensors, the Apple device reads the light intensity of the surrounding area and its temperature to maintain the color accuracy for the on-screen content. So, if you're in a cold blue gas station, you'll see cooler colors displayed on the screen along with louder brightness. If you stand out at sunset, the screen light will have a yellowish tinge and become less aggressive to offset what's happening in the environment. In addition to the fact that on-screen images will be more accurate and consistent, the experience of using an extended gadget will have less impact on the health of the eyes. In practice, the True Tone feature is the pinnacle of a mix of options that work like what you see on the screen of your phone or tablet seem to be getting closer to reality. But there are circumstances in which you might want to disable True Tone. When you take a picture or edit an image, True Tone has the potential to distort reality. You hurt what you see on the screen is not what it gets to a customer, for example. Fortunately, the solution is one that involves only a few touches. Go to Settings or Settings in the Display & Brightness section. Uncheck True Tone at the top of the screen or activate it if you have never taken advantage of it as needed.

Acer introduced two new Chromebooks: the Acer Chromebook 715 and the Acer Chromebook 714, designed to help your employees work in cloud more securely and efficiently. Both Chromebooks feature a premium aluminum chassis with military durability (U.S. MIL-STD 810G), as well as an integrated fingerprint reader and Citrix Ready Certification. In addition, the new Acer Chromebooks give cloud-based productivity tools that will help them work more efficiently, Full HD displays, Intel® Core ™ processors up to the 8th generation for outstanding mobile performance and up to 12 hours battery life. "By adding a premium premium chassis and integrated fingerprint reader to the new Chromebooks, Acer improves the security and reliability of these devices," said James Lin, General Manager, Notebooks, IT Product Business, Acer Inc., IT Products Business at Acer . "Employees of all types - from corporations, mid and small offices, or from the educational environment - need reliable and powerful devices that protect their data, work impeccably and look great." The new Acer Chromebooks fit perfectly with this description . " Both models have Full HD screens, the difference being diagonal, namely 14 or 15 inches as the name says. They have narrow frames, i3 or i5 processors, and low cost options like Celeron or Pentium Gold. They have Type C connectivity, microSD, Wi-Fi AC, Bluetooth 4.2. The Acer Chromebook 715 will be available with 8GB or 16GB DDR4 SDRAM and 32GB, 64GB or 128GB eMMC storage. The new model will be available in EMEA from June in Chrome OS accredited areas at prices starting at 599 euros. The Acer Chromebook 714 will be available with 8GB or 16GB of DDR4 SDRAM and 32GB, 64GB or 128GB eMMC storage. It will be available in EMEA since April, in Chrome OS accredited areas, at prices ranging from 499 euros.

The God Father Free fire

35 apprentices from Skoda's vocational school needed 2,000 hours to get the job done. Extensively teased like it’s a regular production car, the Skoda Mountiaq has been unveiled as a one-off project developed by the company’s students from its vocational school in Mladá Boleslav. The Kodiaq-based pickup truck represents the automaker’s sixth concept car built by apprentices and it was created over the course of eight months. It follows last year's Karoq-based Sunroq SUV-convertible oddity. More than 2,000 hours of work were invested in turning the large SUV into a truck featuring an illuminated bed incorporating a hidden storage compartment underneath. To make room for the bed, the students got rid of the rear doors and also crafted a new shorter roof with an LED light bar mounted just above the windshield. The doors are shorter compared to those of the regular Kodiaq and are also thicker to match the more muscular appearance of the truck. Finished in Sunset Orange, the unique Mountiaq sits on 17-inch wheels shod in chunky off-road tires and has the front and rear tracks extended by 3 centimeters (1.18 inches). For extra effect, an air intake snorkel has been added, along with a front-mounted winch surrounded by a bullbar to let you know this isn’t an ordinary Kodiaq. Skoda’s apprentices also spent some time tweaking the interior cabin where the front seats’ backrests feature body-matching orange embroidery showing a special logo depicting the vehicle in front of a mountain silhouette. Staying true to the company’s “Simply Clever” motto, the Mountiaq has an array of nifty goodies, ranging from a built-in refrigerator to a 2,000-watt subwoofer joined by an amplifier. There are even 3D-printed wheel hub ornaments and two walkie-talkies.

Game Over : Gta Vice City Gta Sanendreas Gta 4 Gta 5 almost Assasians Creed Syndicate Dirt Rally 2 Pubg Halflife 2  Hitman (Hitman 2 Almost Complete) Forza Horizon  BeamNg CS:GO Fortnite  Minecraft

In an era of classics, minis, and collections where rewind buttons, remixed roms, and refined emulation have become common perks for people revisiting classics, old games are getting the royal treatment these days. Unfortunately, the Castlevania Anniversary Collection has none of those. But it does boast the best games, emulation warts and all, of any recent collection (the Mega Man Legacy Collection is its closest rival). Most of the eight Castlevania games compiled here feel great, look great, and sound great, and though the only real emulation feature is a single save state per game, that’s enough. The Castlevania games are that good. The Games The Castlevania Anniversary Collection is full of fun, interesting games spanning the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. Castlevania and Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse are masterpieces: Gorgeous, goofy, twitch-fast platformers, as fun and accessible today as they were decades ago, matched only by the Super Mario and Mega Man series from the NES era. The 16-bit games are also great; Super Castlevania IV and Castlevania Bloodlines show off now-outdated but once-impressive graphical effects that are fun to revisit. At the other end of the spectrum are two poorly programmed Game Boy games that just don’t work. Finally, there’s Kid Dracula, a fascinating spinoff that never came to the US… until now. Here are mini-reviews for each of the Castlevania Anniversary Collection games: Castlevania The original Castlevania is the best game in this collection. It demonstrates total mastery of NES hardware and game design: Backgrounds and settings don’t repeat but instead hint at the larger world, with late-game bridges and towers looming in the distance, painted in vivid blacklight poster colors. Giant boss sprites pop off the screen with lively animations that you are *just* fast enough to outmaneuver. The music rips: The baroque Bach organ jams that inspired 1980s heavy metal shredding guitars in turn inspired Castlevania’s composers to make some of the best electronic music ever committed to a chip. The feel is just right: Whipping, jumping, freezing time, discovering secrets… This is a desert island game for me. It doesn’t get any better: Play Castlevania before you die. Score: Masterpiece Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest Like Zelda II, Simon’s Quest is a failed but fascinating attempt at making an RPG platformer before technology and localization practices were ready for it. It’s an open world to explore with the exact same jumping and whipping of its predecessor; how good does that sound? The problem is that jumping and whipping aren’t the only tools you need to explore the world, as its extremely obscure puzzle solutions just can’t realistically be solved without a walkthrough. Equipping a crystal and kneeling at a cliff may be hinted at by a villager, somewhere, in poorly translated text, but putting together the clues just isn’t fun. And as someone who lived through the pre-internet era and bought this game new, putting together those clues wasn’t even attempted: We used guides. I recommend these ones. (Yes, you can just use a FAQ). With a guide, Simon’s Quest still has challenging combat -- and is a lot more fun. Score: Okay Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse Dracula’s Curse abandons most of the failed experimental exploration stuff of Simon’s Quest and returns to basics. But it does add three more playable characters, including Grant, who can climb walls (the controls aren’t great) and Alucard, who can turn into a bat and just skip tough platforming sections. There are a few branching paths to consider, but Dracula’s Curse is still mostly linear. The graphics pushed the NES hardware with the same crazy detail of the first game: a clocktower with spinning gears, stained glass windows in a dark chapel, and a weird, dayglo forest are some of the best Castlevania locales, ever. Dracula’s Curse features some of the series’ best tunes, too. It doesn’t get any better than the weirdo harpsichord and organ-drenched Clocktower theme. Score: Masterpiece Super Castlevania IV Super Castlevania IV is something of a technical showcase but less fun than its 8-bit predecessors. It has Indiana Jones-style ceiling swinging, giant rotating sprites, and a silly dangling limp whip -- all things that probably couldn’t be pulled off on the NES. But the character sprite is just kind of big and awkward. I find Super Castlevania IV a lot uglier than the previous games, too, with a weird pastel color scheme and sub-par monster designs. It does have a great soundtrack with hilarious imitations of slap bass tones. Score: Good Castlevania Bloodlines A Genesis exclusive, Bloodlines took advantage of the lighter restrictions on violence on that system and went for full gore gross-out moments. Gore fits Castlevania really nicely, and the Genesis game draws an interesting contrast with the clean, muted, SNES game. At this point, I prefer it. One of the two playable characters has a spear, which feels terrible compared to a whip. Pick Morris. Bonus: He’s from Texas. Score: Great The Castlevania Adventure This is the worst game in the collection. Your character moves painfully slowly and it’s clear that Konami just didn’t have the Game Boy hardware figured out. But it’s still worth playing, in a way! Here’s what you do: Play The Castlevania Adventure for 90 seconds, and then immediately switch to the best game in the collection, the original NES Castlevania. The contrast in speed is remarkable, and it makes the NES Castlevania feel like the speediest bullet-hell shmup by comparison. It’s a fun contrast. Score: Awful Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge Konami doubled down on the mistake that was the Adventure engine in Castlevania II. Although it has a really cool Mega Man-style menu that allows you to start Belmont’s Revenge in different areas and remarkable grayscale graphics, the gameplay is unchanged and still painfully slow. Maybe both Game Boy Castlevanias are secretly set underwater? Score: Awful Point Five Kid Dracula Kid Dracula is a weird, wonderful game that should have come to the US but didn’t. It almost feels like a fan mod of Castlevania. The basic building blocks of Dracula’s castle are there -- but they actually look like children's building blocks. The chibi Dracula plays more like Mega Man than Alucard, shooting projectiles and upgrading to new, weird weapons after each boss fight, like a homing spread shot and an exploding bomb. You even get to turn into a bat, eventually, which is helpful in the brutally difficult ramp up in platforming. Perhaps the best part of the Cutesy-vania theme is the music of the first level of Kid Dracula, a major key, happy-sounding remake of Dracula’s Curse’s first level song. Also: Kid Dracula takes place “10,000 years later?” (the question mark is Konami’s) according to the Collection’s bonus materials, so now you know how the story ends (a spinoff story). Score: Great The Collection Each Castlevania game in the Anniversary Collection looks clean and nice, with sharp pixels and brilliant colors. In other words, nothing like an authentic CRT screen. There are stretching and interlacing options but they don’t help. Most people accept this clean, see-every-pixel presentation these days, though, and it doesn’t overly cramp Castlevania's style. For a series that’s so famed for its music, I was sad to experience some audio issues. In Castlevania, a mysterious, loud, R2D2-like beeping showed up in the second level, but it went away for the third. While playing Kid Dracula all of the music became static and scrambled, even when I quit out to the main menu. I had to reboot the Collection to solve that issue. When the music works, which is most of the time, it sounds fantastic, with Konami’s unique instrumentation sounding crystal clear. There’s another sound issue, though: You must enter a sequence of menus to access save states (already annoying), and as you do that the sound each action makes is an ear-splitting high-pitched tone. It’s awful, and it bugged people in the office as much as it bugged me while I played. No other special modes are offered in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, like the boss rushes in the Mega Man Legacy Collection, or the watch-along that you hop into and take over in the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection. There aren’t any gameplay rewind features either, and there’s only a single slot to save each game. This is vanilla emulation, and that’s disappointing. Aside from the games themselves, there is a bonus e-book with history, timelines, and mind-blowing concept and design docs. I am very happy these are out there and preserved. The book also has a few interviews, the highlight of which is with Michiru Yamane, who composed music for Castlevania and Contra games. She’s one of my all-time favorite game composers (check out her Bloodlines tunes in this collection; she did Symphony of the Night after that!) and her inclusion here is extra awesome – she calls out Bach and Kraftwerk as influences, which made me very happy.

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I pull back my giant Zweihänder sword, ready for a stab, and then cancel my attack at the last second. My opponent falls for it, parrying a blow that never arrives. I haven’t dealt any damage yet, but in that instant I already know the fight is won. It’s in moments like this, where you work out how to expose an opponent’s weaknesses within the first few seconds of a fight, that I realised all the struggles I had during Mordhau’s painful opening hours were worth it. After a short flurry of strikes and counters I draw my blade back for the second time. Again, I feint at the last moment, and again they bite, blocking at thin air. This time I’m ready to pounce, and they’re still recovering from their parry as I thrust forward. My blade jabs between their eyes, their neck snaps back as they fold to the floor, and their sword clatters on the cobblestones. “Good fight”, they say in chat as my next opponent approaches, twirling a spear. Mordhau: Most of Mordhau’s modes are team-based frays, but its one-on-one duel servers best expose the brilliance of its medieval melee combat system. You can stab, you can strike from different angles by flicking your mouse, you can feint, “morph” from one type of attack to the other mid-swing, or “chamber” an opponent’s attack by matching the angle of their blade for an instant counter. It’s initially overwhelming. I learned the mouse movements in an afternoon, but knowing when to use each move took me far longer, and I spent my first five hours dying repeatedly. During that time I wished Mordhau had a more in-depth tutorial so I could learn by playing instead of turning to YouTube guides. However, once I’d realised the importance of holding my nerve against an enemy’s feints I started to improve quickly, learning from my mistakes in each duel and turning tricks that had once worked on me back on my opponents (as demonstrated above). That feeling of constant skill progression keeps me coming back. Nearly 30 hours in, I’m still picking up new combos of feints and morphs, and I’ve spent whole evenings fighting opponents in the same duel server without getting bored. Landing a hit is satisfying in its own right thanks to gory physics and crunchy sounds. It helps that landing a hit is satisfying in its own right thanks to Mordhau’s gory physics and crunchy sounds. Your blade rips into opponents with a bloody squelch, lopping of arms, legs, and heads as torsos go limp and ragdoll. The smooth animations help sell the fantasy whether you play in first or third-person, and your character feels responsive, grunting when they exert effort and groaning when they get tagged by an arrow. It’s even more impressive when body bits fly in Frontline, Mordhau’s flagship mode. It’s a 64-player team-based battle in which you progressively capture control points on large maps, pushing the enemy back to their spawn. The scale and variety of these maps is impressive: each has a distinct look, from the white hills of Mountain Peak—the blood glistening on the snow has a certain morbid beauty—to the muddy battlefield of Camp, the largest map. My favourite among the four is Grad, in which one team spawns in a walled keep and the other in a wood across a field. Between them are towers with spiral staircases, ladders, log huts, stacks of hay and a lumber mill, each offering different tactical options. Sometimes I take my powerful Zweihander build and rush to the front lines to bash some skulls; sometimes I play an archer and fire on enemies trying to scale the castle walls; other times I pick a fast, unarmored character that can move around enemy flanks. The character creator is robust in terms of your stats and the appearance of your armor (but not in the diversity of the character underneath, unfortunately) and lets you play any build you like: you start with a blank slate and allocate points shared between weapons, armor pieces, and perks. It has no restrictions on where you can spend those points, so you could create a heavily armored knight who only carries firebombs and has near-silent footsteps, if you really wanted to. Mordhau I’ve yet to try a playstyle I haven’t enjoyed. When you have 64 players swinging weapons and slinging projectiles at each other each fight becomes a spectacle, and even if you’re not racking up kills you can still have fun just watching the chaos unfold. The other Frontline maps, sadly, aren’t as good as Grad. Two are fairly uniform and fighting on them feels roughly the same no matter what control point you’ve reached. Taiga, the last of four Frontline maps, feels like it was built for dull stalemates: once a team captures the central control point it’s difficult to wrestle it back, and as an attacker I feel like I’m being repeatedly funneled down the same narrow walkways into the crosshairs of waiting archers, which is simply not fun. But whenever I’m frustrated, I just switch to a different mode, of which Mordhau has plenty – including a Battle Royale. None stand out next to Frontline or Duels, but each requires a different playstyle, so you’ll always find one to fit your mood. If Frontline feels too random you can try Skirmish, a team mode without respawns, encouraging more caution. If rounds of Battle Royale feel too drawn out, you can jump into a free for all or team deathmatch. It even has a horde mode against AI for when you need something more brainless. I’ve enjoyed playing each mode, even Frontline on its worst maps, and that’s largely because they’re underpinned by the same deep fighting system. I love the mental gymnastics required to beat an experienced opponent—you have to tease out their weaknesses and create a plan to capitalise before they do the same to you. You’re bluffing and double-bluffing moves while deliberately telegraphing others, probing for a metaphorical chink in their armor so that you can sink your blade into a literal one. Finding and exploiting it feels fantastic. I get the same thrill from beating my opponents as I did in Chivalry. I get the same thrill from beating my opponents as I did in Chivalry, the 2012 multiplayer game that heavily inspired Mordhau. I eventually lost interest in Chivalry because players could abuse the physics system to attack in ways that barely looked human, such as spinning full circle in the air, bending over backwards, and hitting you from behind their head. Mordhau feels more grounded, like its rules are easier to understand and more difficult to exploit. Unfortunately, it also comes with its fair share of hassles. That starts with the performance: Mordhau hangs on a blank screen for 10 seconds nearly every time I boot it up, and when I load into a server there’s a good chance I’ll be instantly disconnected and sent back to the main menu. The end result is that it’s not nearly as quick and easy to get in and start playing as most games are. It has its fair share of trolls, too, from team killers to players that build defensive walls inside their own spawn rooms, trapping teammates. And naturally, there are unsavory characters in the chat. It’s not developer Triternion’s fault these players exist, but it’s worrying that there are no tools to report players in-game, for example, so their behaviour – including rampant racism and homophobia – persists and goes unpunished. A chat filter would easily catch much of the hate they spew, while a ban on building in spawn areas is surely a no-brainer to add. The most important thing, though, is that Mordhau has the foundations of an excellent multiplayer game that could well hold my attention for the rest of the year.

If you stripped Monster Hunter down to its core components and redesigned it as a free-to-play (but not pay-to-win), online-only game, you'd get something very close to Dauntless. It takes most of the best parts of Capcom's iconic franchise and redeploys them in a way that's accessible and fun with a whole lot less baggage. While it can lack the depth that arises from that complexity, Dauntless’s streamlined approach offers something else that more than makes up for it. The hook is simple: you’re a slayer, and you slay big, nasty monsters called behemoths. That’s it – slaying is basically all you do. The lack of a real story beyond inconsequential blocks of text at the beginning and end of missions that foster little empathy was a bummer at first, but I quickly forgot about it. Then again, storytelling has never been the selling point in other games in this genre (such as Monster Hunter itself or God Eater) so it’s hard to say I miss it very much. Instead of being a source of lore-heavy dialogue, every NPC in Dauntless is either a vendor or questgiver in the hub town, so when you’re not customizing things in menus you’re out in the wild chopping off tails, dodging fireballs, and slaying enormous beasts. It’s very focused. 11 Minutes of Dauntless PS4 Pro Gameplay Dauntless is all about constant progression. Every monster you kill nets you a bunch of crafting materials like hides and feathers and scales that are used back in town to craft weapons and armor based on those very same monsters. You need to harvest fire-based creatures to craft fiery weapons that will help you take down ice monsters, and you need to harvest the ice monsters to make armor good enough to withstand the ice-based attacks of even stronger ones. Every enemy has a clear strength and weakness so you can intuitively craft the right equipment for any given situation, which then feeds back into the “hunt, craft, repeat” loop for the next fight. There isn’t a very wide variety of activities to do, but the moment-to-moment gameplay is so excellent. “ It’s a progression system that rewards commitment. Beyond crafting better equipment, there are Mastery levels as a form of progression. The more you use a type of weapon or slay a type of beast the higher your Mastery rank increases in that specific field. The higher your mastery level is the better gear you can make, the better upgrades you can unlock, and so on. It’s a system that rewards commitment and, refreshingly, it doesn’t punish you for not spending money on Dauntless' optional (and primarily cosmetic) microtransactions. Each of Dauntless' six weapon types feel unique and powerful, with slots for items called cells that you can use to upgrade and customize them to your tastes. The sword is nice and balanced as a good entry weapon, but the flashiness of the war pike makes it an exciting one to wield for extended combos. The only dual-wielding melee option, the chain blades, are extremely fast and efficient, whereas the repeaters offer a mid-ranged handgun style to mix things up. Hammers are the slowest of the bunch but inflict huge damage and the axe is somewhere between the sword and hammer as a massive bladed weapon that’s fine-tuned for slicing and dicing. Dauntless - Console Launch Trailer Of all the weapon types my favorite was the war pike because it felt the most unique compared to what I’ve tried in other monster hunting games over the years. It’s got good range for a melee weapon and can attack either very quickly to build up your special meter or slowly for strong slashing attacks to break off monster parts. It’s combos and combat style are the most nuanced and tricky of the weapon options, but it feels great once you get the hang of it. It also just looks really cool to use thanks to all its spinning and visual effects. Dauntless's monster designs are often a mix between fantastical creatures and more grounded, real-world animals – like the Embermane, which looks like a rhino and lion merged together, or the Shrike, which looks a whole lot like an Owlbear from Dungeons & Dragons. While not quite as other-worldly as the bombastic beasts from God Eater, nor as realistically designed as Monster Hunter’s dinosaur-esque creatures, Dauntless has a striking style all its own that really grew on me over time. The bright, contrasting color palette is easy on the eyes and each behemoth has a lot of personality. The boar-like Quillshot has a habit of lunging sideways to try and stab you with the spikes on its back that kept me on my toes, and the surprising speed of the terrifying and fiery Hellion always caught me off guard. Learning attack patterns and perfecting your dodge roll is just as important as knowing your weapon combos. When you dodge you’re invulnerable for a brief time, so you can actually roll towards and through enemies mid-fight. But since so many weapons are huge with deliberate wind-ups, timing things so that you don’t get stuck in an attack animation right as a behemoth is barrelling towards you is paramount. It’s got a great rhythm of planning and execution in each fight. Microtransaction Reaction Dauntless uses a Hunt Pass as a form of progression, which is a free system where you complete challenges to unlock rewards similar to something like Fortnite's Battle Pass. You can pay $10 to upgrade your Hunt Pass to Elite, which unlocks even more rewards as you level it up, including some awesome cosmetic skins, useful (but not vital) in-game items, and other customization options. Other optional microtransactions from the Store include purchasable dyes and emotes, boosters that increase the loot you gain, weapon and armor skins, as well as potions to boost your stats on hunts. Thankfully, none of them felt intrusive at all and the rewards in the Elite Hunt Pass itself were actually attractive enough for me to upgrade to it. Doing so let's you access any of the rewards you’ve already unlocked, or you can pay even more to skip ahead and unlock them all – but, crucially, this system never felt necessary and never felt like it was undermining the earned progression of hunting monsters and upgrading my gear and Mastery levels. The often slow-paced and methodical build-up of a big expedition in Monster Hunter is a key part of its charm, but Dauntless trades all of those extra layers for something much smoother and more accessible. A lot of the fluff is gone so you don’t need to cook meat out on a hunt, lay down traps, track creatures, or spend time staring at loading screens between map zones. Instead, you’re just dropped into one of three fairly straightforward types of biomes (either temperate, frozen, or arid) and have to go find the monster. Part of me missed doing other things due to how empty some of the environments feel if you don’t find the monster right away, but it’s a worthy trade-off to make hunts easier to enjoy overall. Dauntless Whenever I logged into Dauntless (assuming I wasn’t stuck in one of the hour-long queues that accompanied its launch week but have thankfully mostly been resolved) I’d often jump right into matchmaking for a hunt in under a minute. Most hunts last less than 10 minutes and then you’re right back to the hub to quickly craft before going out again. Hardcore Monster Hunter fans will likely miss the complications they’ve grown to love such as tracking monsters, capturing them, and exploring multiple zones across each hunt to find the right beast in the wild. But having a more streamlined experience removed a ton of the friction that would otherwise slow me down, which made enjoying the genre that much easier. Technically you can play Dauntless privately without matchmaking, but you'll still need to be online and I wouldn’t recommend it anyway. If you get downed or die during a hunt at all (which is much more likely while playing solo) then your rewards are dramatically reduced, and other than torturing yourself with artificially inflated difficulty that makes every fight take three times as long there’s nothing to gain. Plus, multiplayer is a blast. Working together to slay a behemoth is much more personally rewarding, and between the variety of weapons and armor plus colored dyes it’s nearly impossible to see two players that look the same.