Blizzard rolled out a huge content patch to Heroes of the Storm today, taking the game to "2.0".

Among these changes are enormous hero packages for everyone so they can get rolling with 20 characters of their chosen archetype, a completely revamped loot and progression system, a new map, and more.

A new challenge in Heroes of the Storm also allows players to unlock some significant Overwatch rewards, including an amazing D.Va skin. Join Andrew Reiner and Daniel Tack as they explore many of the new changes to Heroes of the Storm in this video feature!

Our regularly revised feature keeps you up to date on the Kickstarter games worth watching, and helps you track projects both before and after they’re funded.

Welcome to the Kickstarter Compendium, a gathering of games and game-related projects that we’ve come across that deserve your attention. The crowd-funding model for video games has resulted in some fascinating new game ideas, and new projects are going up on a weekly basis that deserve your attention. 

The only problem is keeping track of it all – what’s worth watching, and what are these different projects about? As an ongoing feature, our Kickstarter Compendium is your guide to games seeking funding through Kickstarter. After funding projects are complete, this feature will also track what games (and game-related projects) got funded and which ones didn’t – and, where possible, offer links to the projects as they are developed. 

Dark Souls comparisons are thrown around liberally. I'm guilty of attaching the name to difficult action/RPGs of similar ilk, and I'm sure many of you are too. I don't understand why people are saying The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is like Dark Souls, but that comparison shows how loosely "Souls-like" is used in our gaming vocabulary these days. We're often not wrong in our assessments, however, as developers draw heavy inspiration from the Souls series, and have generally been upfront with their appreciation of From Software's work.

Developer Deck13 Interactive is the first to admit its forthcoming game The Surge is a mix between Dark Souls and Rise of the Robots. The studio also made one of the best Souls-like titles to date in 2014's Lords of the Fallen. Game Informer's Dan Tack gave Lords of the Fallen an 8.5 out of 10, saying, "While borrowing heavily from the Souls franchise, it’s done well and with its own signature flair. I highly recommend this game to anyone that enjoys that series, and if you haven’t gone down that road before, it might be a more forgiving entry point into the action RPG."

We're live right now! Join Javy Gwaltney and Elise Favis on Twitch or Youtube.

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We'll be hosting a two-hour livestream of Red Barrels' Outlast 2 tomorrow starting at 2pm CT.

Taking place in rural Arizona, Outlast 2 leaves behind the asylum of the original for bigger and scarier environments. After your wife is kidnapped by crazed cultists, your goal is to retrieve her without getting killed.

Outlast 2 mostly succeeds with its intense scares and riveting atmosphere. We took some time to compile four things that stood out to us most from our playthrough. Watch Kyle Hilliard and I point out the most interesting tidbits below.

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In the '90s, Sega launched an all-out assault on video game industry frontrunner Nintendo in a now-iconic advertising campaign. The flagship television ad directly called out Sega's direct competition with the slogan "Genesis Does What Nintendon't." In addition to boosting the awareness of Sega's underdog hardware, this approach effectively launched the console wars of the 1990s. The aggressive ads stood in stark contrast to Nintendo's safe, sterile approach and drew attention to the less-known company.

In the time since then, most companies have generally evolved in the ways they interact with competitors, often taking more diplomatic and congratulatory approaches. However, when companies do publicly bash their competitors – such as during Sony's E3 2013 press conference when the company capitalized on the backlash of Microsoft's Xbox One DRM policies – it stokes the fire for tribalistic fan communities that are just waiting for an excuse to attack the other side of the fence.

Dragon Quest Heroes II releases tomorrow, and while it is a solid action game, the original game is the better of the two.

You can find our full review here, but in the video below you will find four highlights that outline why I think the original is the better of the two.

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Last year, over the course of four months, we played through Shenmue for the Dreamcast in its entirety. It was an experimental video series, with an undefined schedule that allowed us to take in all the feedback for each episode by reading and responding to comments in (almost) real time. The experiment was a success! So we immediately decided (after playing through Dark Souls III, Tex Murphy: Under A Killing Moon, Shadow of the Colossus, and Resident Evil 4) that there was no time like the present to return to Yu Suzuki's masterpiece. For the sequel, we're playing the Xbox version that was published by Microsoft in 2002.

What Remains of Edith Finch is a game about stories. You explore a bizarre house as young Edith, learning about the unfortunate deaths of various members of the Finch family. Developer Giant Sparrow (the studio that previously made The Unfinished Swan) has devised clever ways to weave these tales – and the opening sequence of the game gives you a taste of what to expect. 

Join Andrew Reiner, Elise Favis, and I as we play through the first 25 minutes of What Remains of Edith Finch, talking about what makes this game interesting and how it sets itself apart from other story-focused titles. I don't want to spoil too much here, but if you've ever wanted to know what it's like to roll down a hill as a shark, you should check it out.

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Months ago, Jeff Cork and I bought a used PlayStation 1 memory card and learned a shocking amount about its original owner by booting up their old saves. It went so well that we decided to roll the dice again and popped in another random memory card for the PlayStation 2. We hope you're ready for another adventure as we attempt to figure out the crucial question: Would we get along with this gamer from 2002?

Watch us get the bottom of this confounding case below or check it out on YouTube.

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