Outlast 2 released at the end of last month, a sequel to one of the horror hits of 2013 – a good year for Youtubers playing horror games. The second game took the series out of the asylum and into north Arizona and mostly got positive reviews. Of course, despite this there were some complaints about the difficulty and so developers Red Barrels have addressed this in a patch released yesterday.

One of the main complaints about the difficulty level had to do with the speed at which the batteries used in your camera were consumed. Much like the last game, Outlast 2 has a style of ‘found footage’ gameplay, and seeing through the camera especially while using the night-vision capabilities will use up battery life and once they run down you need to change out those batteries so you can see in the dark again. Battery conservation is one of the mechanics but a lot of players felt that Outlast 2’s camera just chewed through the batteries at a fair rate. The patch sees that the camera’s microphone will now no longer use extra batteries so you’ll be able to locate enemies through the walls now without having to be worried about using too much power.

On the game’s Steam community page the devs said that the patch “introduces some minor adjustments to the game’s difficulty in key areas and moments. On Normal difficulty this will offer players a more appropriately balanced experience while still maintaining higher levels of challenge on Hard and Nightmare difficulties.”

The full patch notes can be found here.

Another week for me venturing through World of Warcraft and both my characters have travelled a fair distance, leaving behind the places they were previously and entering new territories and meeting new people.

Dungeoneering

Teddired started off my week and Lone decided to take me into a few dungeons, playing with his own Pandaren as we journeyed through various dungeons with a group of other people who had been placed into our instance. Now, I used to have an opinion of MMO games. I used to think they had a few too many people who were dicks solely for the sake of getting their laughs at the expense of others. Most of the people we played with were fine. One person we ended up grouping with twice and refused to do his job as tank, allowing myself and Lone to take aggro. Fortunately last week’s experience with Blackpowder Inc. had already introduced me to the nicer side of dungeons so I didn’t take it to heart.

Also, my boar decided he wanted to sit in the same chair as me after one of those aggravating dungeon runs, and it’s nice to know that he’s there for me through it all…

After the dungeon running I finally finished up where I was and headed across to the Stranglethorn area I’d accidentally found my way into last week before realising I was following the wrong quest marker. Picked up some missions and then decided to get a nice little photo to commemorate being near lush green plants again that weren’t super creepy.

I headed down into the camp where the majority of my picked up missions were set and began killing enemy soldiers, trying to get to them and pick them off before the other players in the area could wipe the map clean. I’ve never known such competition, and many of them ignored my attempts to offer to share kills (i.e. we both land a hit, we both get loot) so I said ‘Fuck it!’ and joined them in the ruthless hunt for targets to fulfill my quota.

And then I met a new friend.

I became a Hunter because I love pets. Now I have a tiny raptor following me around as well as my lovely boar, and although he doesn’t really do anything or contribute to attacks I’m glad to have him with me. This hatchling is an unexpected bonus for completing some missions down in that camp and although I have a feeling at some point I will have to give him up I’ll enjoy his presence while I can.

Travelling Further By Accident

Meanwhile Bodeclaw was wrapping up missions where she was. I had a choice of two left to finish off, one to instigate a Furbolg uprising with the aid of a magical rod; the other to report to a place in the next area of the Stonetalon Mountains. I decided to pop over quickly and get the Stonetalon missions rolling before coming back when I hit a dead end to finish off the furbolg quests.

After a little confusion about which way I had to go to get up to the outpost (the path was behind the other post I got the mission from) I ventured into the Stonetalon Mountains only to find that this was an area that not only other Alliance players were in – but I saw the odd Horde player too. And the first one killed me seeing me dash away from an NPC opponent with half health.

Bastard.

Because of this after completing the first missions I had taken, I decided to race forward to complete those quests and then I’d go back for that Furbolg mission. That would be what I’d do. So I raced forward and eventually found myself at the Northwatch Expedition Camp.

Some interesting quests saw me racing all over the place and eventually collecting all the components for the Ramlette, I encountered the first Horde NPCs who weren’t hostile to me. The Grimtotem Tauren. I like the tauren race, especially their background. I’d be a tauren, but I want my eventual Horde alt to be a Warlock and I don’t think Tauren can be Warlock… I’ll have to double check that.

So eventually I found my way down to the Grimtotem Post and began recruiting their aid for the Alliance. I have respect for them, and frankly the skull facepaint looks awesome on the models.

I then continued on to more Alliance settlements along the way and eventually made it to Honor’s Stand where I took on a quest to fly a survey vehicle. It flew… rather further than I thought it would. Now I’m at Northwatch and although I have the flight points marked along the way, I’d rather run back and complete all the quests along the way…

… I guess the Furbolg uprising’s going to have to wait until next week to get started.

Well, Digmbot predicted that there might be reasons why there was no PC demo for Prey and already a fairly game-breaking bug has been discovered and abused in the game. It’s not one that most players will really mind though.

Prey has only just been released, and the glitch allows players to basically duplicate resources over and over giving them a virtually unlimited supply of crafting resources. The glitch makes use of the in-game material recyclers to reproduce the items placed within many times over.

To reach those recyclers, a player only has to progress around an hour into the game and upon reaching the main character Morgan Yu’s office you will gain access to the material recycler, or at least it will become useable. You then fill the recycler with already recycled items and by then dividing it into at least four piles of things, you can effectively copy everything.

It probably won’t be there for long though, so get in while the getting’s good. Or you know, just don’t cheat. But as someone who abused a similar glitch way back in the early Pokemon days, who I am to tell you not to use this one?

Overwatch making money, Civ VI value and Oculus re-focus – your news update!