Tech2.Games S01E07: Baked goods as input devices, reincarnated video games and more

If you said out loud that Doom 2 is one of the greatest shooters of all time, you’re unlikely to receive much of a counterargument from anyone in a room—even if said room was full of elitist FPS aficionados. For nostalgia’s sake, you could drop the low asking price of Rs 64 on Steam to own the game right now. But only a true fan would spend US$ 3,150 on eBay for the original 3.5” floppy discs of the game directly, buying them from creator John Romero. Talk about bragging rights. There’s more stuff this week, of course, so let’s start, shall we?Marvel Heroes Omega makes its way to consolesWhile the PC version of Marvel Heroes (and subsequent iterations) has existed for a few years, it wasn’t until April this year that the console version of the superhero-based free-to-play MMO was announced. Well, it’s finally here on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.I’ve played a bit of it on PC, and imagine it being a ton of fun with a group of friends. To play, it feels like a superhero version of Diablo with MMO elements, and as you would expect, the fact that it’s F2P means that there’s a lot of in-game stuff at which you can throw your real-world money. Grab it on PS4 here, and for some reason I can’t find it on the Indian Xbox One store.Diablo 3 Necromancer + StarCraft RemasteredAs you would expect, there’s more than just a single piece of Blizzard news this week. Diablo III’s 2.6.0 update brings with it the Necromancer class. It’s not free, however, and to play as everyone’s favourite returning character from Diablo II, you will have to purchase the Necromancer pack which costs USD 14.99 / Rs 1,248 / Rs 940 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One respectively. (Diablo III: Reaper of Souls is required). You can grab it here.For the same price, you can also pre-order the game that conquered Korea, and enabled Korean pro gamers to conquer the world in return. Yep, StarCraft Remastered will be out on PC worldwide in August (14^th, to be precise, although the Blizzard shop is still vague about its release date).That epic-yet-weird-as-heck alternate reality trailer has you wanting a live action StarCraft movie, though, doesn’t it?Playing as Widowmaker with a Baguette in OverwatchAh, when French baked goods serve as input devices for an Overwatch character. Streamer and content creator Rudeism is famous for using bizarre control methods to play games, such as Dance Pads for Dark Souls 3, playing Winston on Overwatch with bananas. I’d like to say his latest effort has trumped his previous ones, but I don’t think I’m ready for that level of honesty just yet. See for yourself.The Castlevania Netflix Show has an interesting voice castRemember that cool-looking teaser for the Netflix Castlevania show which came out over a month back? Well, now we’re hearing about the voice cast from the horses’ mouths.The show will feature The Hobbit Movies’ Graham McTavish and Richard Armitage, Battlestar Galactica’s James Callis, The Mask of Zorro/Annabelle’s Tony Amendola and Orphan Black/Watchmen’s Matt Frewer, among others.Steam Refunds and Rust’s lost $4.4 millionGarry’s mod and Rust creator Garry Newman recently tweeted Rust’s Steam refund numbers, and it appears that players got refunds for nearly 330,000 units (~6% of total sales) of Rust resulting in lost revenue of USD 4.4 million for Facepunch Studios. The two reasons that topped refund requests were “Not fun”, followed by “Bad performance”, which Newman feels is “pretty fair”, given that Rust can be unforgiving to newer players.Other game publishers haven’t been transparent enough with their sales and refund numbers to paint an actual picture here, but in an interview with PCGamesN Newman said he felt the refund system resulted in Rust gaining more players (who picked up the game and ended up enjoying it) than the other way around.Quake Champions will come to SteamIn a move which can only be described as “hell yes”, Senior Producer Jason Bergman announced in a recent Q&A that “Quake Champions will indeed be released on Steam”. Players will still need a Besthesda.net account but users playing the game on Steam will not need to go through Bethesda’s launcher.Having played one of the many betas, I found the game to be a lot of fun, but mostly because it scratched the arena shooter itch which had been lingering on my person for several years. Disappointingly, however, some of the later betas virtually had no players. A release on Steam and that $1 million Quake Championships, which is set to take place in August will remedy the situation, hopefully.Homeworld: Cataclysm reincarnated as Homeworld: EmergenceThe standalone expansion to Homeworld, Homeworld: Cataclysm developed by Barking Dog Studios was infamous for one specific reason: it was rumoured that the source code for the game had been lost. While Cataclysm isn’t coming back with its original title (Blizzard apparently owns the trademark), it is returning as Homeworld: Emergence, which other than its name, is identical to game released 17 years ago.If you were a fan of the original games, Deserts of Kharak or space strategy games in general, it’s worth picking up for USD 10 on gog.com.