Microsoft is making a big play to return full steam (no pun intended) to PC. Not only are they opening up their first party titles, such as Halo and Gears of War, to Steam, they’ve also extended their Game Pass service for PC. Now, we’ve got some possible hints that they’ll be doing even more by adding mod support to the Windows Store.

In the latest Windows 10 update, a curious new folder appeared titled ModdableWindowsApps. This led many to speculate that Microsoft was about to open the floodgates, so to speak, and allow modding officially on the store. Microsoft did address the update in their dev center website.

“A folder under the ProgramFiles\ModifiableWindowsApps path [has been added], where the contents of your desktop application’s install folder are projected so that users can modify the installation files (for example, to install mods). This element is currently intended to be used only by certain types desktop of PC games that are published by Microsoft and our partners.”

So while this doesn’t confirm outright that public support is coming, it seems a pretty likely possibility that being for ‘certain computers’ is a beta test of some kind. It definitely would be a big sign of commitment to the PC audience, since modding has always been a beloved part of that scene. We’ll keep you updated.

With the number of titles – like Borderlands 3 – that are becoming exclusive or timed exclusive to the Epic Games Store for PC, it’s interesting to see how consumers are reacting. Though many blame Epic Games, especially since it’s not saying “no” to such deals, the decision does very much fall on publishers of those games as well. Take The Outer Worlds, Obsidian Entertainment’s upcoming first person RPG, which is exclusive for one year to the Epic Games Store and Windows Store on PC.

After showcasing some new gameplay at PAX East, director of communications Mikey Dowling fielded questions about the game. Dowling started off about the Epic Games Store exclusivity and said, “I just wanted to say one question that maybe, if you’ve messaged me on Instagram, or Facebook, or Twitter, or text me, or DMed me – any kind of thing – about the Epic Games Store. We just wanted to let you know that our Private Division partners are fantastic and we love working with them. It’s a decision that they made for the game.

“We’re just excited to be working on the game with them, and we want to just talk about this awesome game that you just saw.”

The Outer Worlds will be coming to Steam, but in 2020. In the meantime, it will launch for Xbox One and PS4 along with PC later this year. Thus far, we’ve learned that the game will have a survival mode called “Supernova” and a linear story with playtime that can vary between 15 to 40 hours. Stay tuned for more details on it in the coming months.

Remember when Take-Two’s CEO talked about the Epic Games Store, and putting their games on that storefront, noting that they want to be where the consumers are, and not the other way around? So, funny story. The Outer Worlds – which is being published by Private Division, a Take-Two owned publishing label – is going to be exclusive to the Epic Games Store at launch, Epic announced at their GDC keynote today.

The Obsidian Twitter account later clarified that it will also be coming to the Windows Store at launch—but those will be the only two PC stores it is available on for the first 12 months after its release. The two that PC gamers hate the most, I am sure they are thrilled about this.

Nevertheless, as we have seen, it seems that in spite of the very vocal complaints that Epic Game Store exclusivity seems to generate, actual sales aren’t affected by the move at all—so you can see why developers and publishers don’t see any harm in continuing to do it.

The Outer Worlds launches on PC, PS4, and Xbox One later this year.

The Outer Worlds will be available on the Windows Store at launch as well. Other platforms will be available 12 months later.

— Obsidian (@Obsidian) March 20, 2019

The latest episode of Inside Xbox may have just begun, but Microsoft is dropping bombs already, confirming that Halo: The Master Chief Collection will be coming to PC, as has been rumoured for a while now. Interestingly, it will be available on the Windows Store and Steam. It will also include Halo: Reach and the base version of Halo: Combat Evolved.

Though the games will be enhanced for PC (including 60 FPS gameplay, 4K resolutions, and HDR), you won’t have all of them available at once. Community director Brian Jarrard revealed that The Master Chief Collection will be released in phases on PC. Halo: Reach will be out first, followed by Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, the campaign for Halo 3: ODST, and then Halo 4.

This approach is being done to ensure that each game is handled properly. “We’re embarking on a journey with our community to build a PC experience that delivers on PC gamer expectations. The team is passionately committed to ensuring that all of the features, bells, and whistles expected in a modern PC title are included with MCC,” revealed Jarrard. 343 Industries is also working with studios like Ruffian Games (Crackdown 2) and Splash Damage (Dirty Bomb) to get the PC version running smoothly.

There’s currently no release date or pricing details, but there’s more information on Halo Waypoint in the meantime. Stay tuned for more information, especially at SXSW 2019 on March 17th.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay

Development

Age of Empires: Definitive Edition was first revealed in June 2017 at E3 2017, by Microsoft Studios Creative Director, Adam Isgreen. The game was originally planned for October 19, 2017, which was 20 years exactly after the original release. However, the game would receive a delay to February 20, 2018, citing polish time to “treat the Age of Empires franchise with the respect it deserves” according to Microsoft.

The definitive edition would add new quality of life improvements expected from a modern RTS game, that the original version lacked. Each campaign is now fully voiced. There is an all new UI, the ability to set control groups and attack-move, an idle villagers button and improved destruction physics, among other things. The campaign and scenario editor allows would be creators to make their own custom campaigns that can be shared with other players via the Age of Empires website.

Microsoft would cite before release that the game was exclusive to the Windows Store platform because they wanted to route multiplayer for the game through Xbox Live, which was a feature other platforms like Steam would be unable to support at present.

Upon release, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition saw mixed or average reviews from critics, hitting a 70 on Metacritic, with the score as a reflection of what many critics saw as a solid update of a game, praising its visuals and soundtrack, but with a lot of anachronistic issues that have been superannuated by modern titles.

Story

Age of Empires doesn’t have much of a story per say. There is a single player campaign element, which is divided into different segments and often features the rise of a specific empire in history, while asking the player to consider a variety of objectives while they do it.

The first campaign, Ascent of Egypt Learning Campaign functions as a tutorial for how to play the game, showing fundamentals such as resource gathering, army building and rising through the tech tree, as well as more advanced strategies such as trading and wonder-building.

The first real campaign, Voices of Babylon, tells the rise of the Babylonian Empire. Players take the civilization through its rise and fall through eight chapters. Next, players take on the roles of famous Greeks.

Finally, in Yamato of the Rising Sun, players take the Yamato Kingdom from just another of many clans across Japan, to bringing the entire nation into unison under one rule. Again, there are eight unique missions within this campaign.

Gameplay

Regardless of specific game mode, such as campaign that would include specific objectives for each map, the player is generally going to be working on a civilization up from hunter gatherers into an empire to be reckoned with. Players use different types of units to handle different tasks, from resource gathering to war waging.

There are 12 civilizations to play in the game, split between four styles of Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greek and East Asian. These correspond with the empires featured within the campaign, though the different subsets within each of the larger groups has different tech trees to climb, which helps to balance the game by ensuring that not one single army can every have all tech.

Using villagers to gather resources during the game is of the utmost importance, as resources do not grow back and allowing your enemies to hoard all the wood or stone will put the player at a significant disadvantage. Villagers and other such civilian units can serve combat roles in a pinch, but it’s to their significant disadvantage. They’re far better suited to resource gathering, repairing buildings or warships from damage or foraging for food.

The player’s resources also determine their ability to create new buildings and they directly tie into the tech tree. Technology is researched in a linear manner, with more becoming available to the player based on previously researched upgrades and the age that your civilization is in, which is itself a feature of the tech tree.

Military units are the central combatants, and while largely land based given the historical basis of the game, there are other classes that can give a player the upper hand. Base infantry type get in close and Archers attack from a distance either mounted or on foot. Other kinds of mounted units such as war elephants and cavalry can inflict more damage than basic infantry. The player can also build siege machines such as Ballista and Catapults, which each having their own benefits such as the catapult doing bonus damage on buildings, and splash damage to nearby units.

Sea based units can be created, including villager-like Fishing boats, transport ships which can move the other units over the water and can be useful for flanking, and Warships which can attack other sea based units, enemy units and buildings close to the shoreline. The tech tree and the potential inability to train a unit or two is the only real differences between civilizations, meaning that a Yamato Swordsman is the same as a Korean Swordsman. It’s the tech tree that provides potential upgrades to these unit types that other civilizations would lack, and differentiates the 12 civilizations.

The player is also responsible for maintaining a base, which is where villagers work from, armies are trained from and games are won. If the player’s buildings all fall, they will not survive the game. Players begin with a town centre and four villagers, and must quickly begin to gather the resources needed to build housing to grow their population cap. From there, other buildings can be developed that facilitate training of military units, researching the tech tree, defensive fortifications for when your armies are away, and expanding storage capacity for resources.

Finally, Wonders are huge, architectural achievements that represent your pinnacle of society and accomplishment. They provide no direct gameplay benefit in the way most other buildings do, and take a large amount of resources and time to construct. They do however, act as a win condition for many game types. In a score based game, just building the wonder is worth a lot of points and can usually decide the game. Because of its importance to win conditions, players need to keep their wonders well protected from their enemies.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.

Finally launching for the PC gaming platform this week, Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition brings Square Enix’s magnum opus to Windows machines everywhere. And while the game is a perfectly acceptable port, one enterprising mod creator has taken it upon himself to improve the game even further.

Known as the “Special K mod” released by a user that goes by the name Kaldaien, the addition of Special K helps the game work around some issues, such as long loading times due to the SteamAPI overhead running in the background and stuttering issues that may happen due to texture loading/streaming within the game.

Kaldaien specifically would call out within his post that a lot of these issues can be mistaken for the maligned DRM software, Denuvo. However, the modder is quite positive that it isn’t, and I guess thanks to his work, we can take his word that it “emphatically has nothing to do with Denuvo”. Final Fantasy XV: Windows Edition is now available on Steam, Origin, and Windows Store.

Cellar Door Games’ Full Metal Furies has been on the down-low for many, many months since its initial announcement but more information is finally being revealed by the developer. Its most recent update highlights quick-switching in a new video, showcasing one of the game’s core mechanics that we’ve only briefly seen till now.

Quick-switching essentially allows a solo player to use two characters, switching between them as necessary. You could use Triss to break barriers with your shield and tank damage while Alex, the fighter, moves in to combo and air-crit foes. If one character goes down, you can switch to the other to revive them. The main purpose is to allow all the co-op content to be completed solo as well.

Full Metal Furies doesn’t have a release date but Cellar Door Games will be providing updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday until it finally launches. It will be coming to PC via the Windows Store and Steam along with Xbox One.

Much like last year’s Gears of War 4 and Forza Horizon 3, Turn 10 Studios’ Forza Motorsport 7 is facing some pretty big pre-load issues on Windows 10 PCs. If you decide to pre-load the game – which is a hefty download that can go up to 95 GB – the download may stop randomly. This forces you to then re-download the entire file again with the Windows Store delivering an error code on the same.

Over on the official Forza forums and Reddit, complaints are pouring in from concerned players. When you consider that some people have data caps to worry about, it’s no small matter. Solutions like uninstalling all the content and logging into the store to restart the download have helped for some.

Clearing the Windows Store cache by hitting Windows key + R and using the “wsreset” prompt might help. As of now, however, there’s still no official response from Turn 10 or Microsoft. Basically, if you really want to play Forza Motorsport 7, you’re better off buying the Xbox One version.

What are your thoughts on Windows Store still having such monumental issues, especially one year after the fiascoes with other high profile games? Let us know in the comments.

Since Phil Spencer took over as head of the Xbox division, Microsoft has been focusing a lot on catering to PC gamers. This was evident in numerous first party titles being available on Xbox One and Windows 10, Xbox Live features on the OS and the addition of Xbox Play Anywhere.

However, there’s a lot more to be done and Spencer acknowledges this. Speaking to PC Gamer, the man said that, “We’ve got more work to do on [the Windows] Store, clearly. I hear the feedback on that. I think what you’re likely to see from us, the term I use is ‘One store, multiple storefronts.’ From payment instruments, where all my entitlements are, you want one store on the platform, our at least our store, that knows where you are and what you own.

“But when I want to go buy Forza content, a lot of that’s going to happen right in the Forza shell of the game itself. I do think with the Xbox app we could build a more curated pure gaming front-end for core gaming. Right now, our Store has this disadvantage of being everything. From buying a book, to buying a movie, to buying a song track, to buying an app, to buying a game. And relative to my experience on GOG or Steam or even Origin and Battle.net and stuff, those are more direct core gaming front-ends. We have work to go do there. We’re thinking about how we can build that experience.”

Spencer also discussed why the Windows Store doesn’t have native support for Win32. “We’ve talked about Centennial and how we’ve made it easier for Win32 apps, maybe legacy Win32 apps, to get into the Store and get wrapped in something that kind of makes them emulate a UWP on the platform. That’s something that’s important because as you and I both know there’s such a base of Win32 code that’s out there.

“I get a lot of questions about why we wouldn’t just natively support Win32. There are some issues with Win32 as a long-term app model. It’s not really an app model. The idea of an app model wasn’t really around when we went from—I was at Microsoft when we went from Win16 to Win32, I remember those translations—so I definitely think we have more work to go do. My view is we will gain UWP adoption when UWP is more functional than msi + Win32. And we’re not there yet.

“But that’s the path that we’re on. How do we go make uninstall, install, cleanliness of install, manageability both for the customer and the developer, and the portability when a developer wants to take advantage of that, something that exceeds the ecosystem of Win32 + msi as a way to get things installed. And that’s when we’ll see wide adoption. And that’s the path we’re on.”

What are your thoughts on the current state of the Windows Store and how it could be improved? Let us know in the comments.

Here’s a rather annoying thing that Windows 10 players who purchase from the Windows Store can’t do in Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare – they can’t connect to the Steam player base, which represents the lion’s share of Call of Duty users on PC.

Activision noted on its official support site that both Infinite Warfare and Modern Warfare Remastered noted that multiplayer servers won’t connect to Steam servers. On the official FAQ, it noted that with regards to playing with friends who own Steam copies, “No, you can only play these titles with other users of Windows 10 on Windows Store.”

It’s a fairly annoying thing to deal with especially since Steam has been the default PC market for Call of Duty for much of the series’ lifetime. Whether Microsoft is working to deal with this or not hasn’t been confirmed. In the meantime, opt for the Steam version if you want to experience either game’s multiplayer the right way.