Across all platforms, Minecraft – and all of its various editions – has sold over 150 million copies, and a tracker on the official site shows PC sales are now over 30 million.

A tracker on the Minecraft website for PC sales of the game hit 30 million this week and it’s still rising (via GamesIndustry.biz).

Back in 2014, console sales of the game surpassed PC and Mac figures, and just a year later, Minecraft Pocket Edition on Android and iOS sold 30 million units.

In October 2018, Microsoft’s head of Minecraft, Helen Chiang, told Business Insiderthat the game had accumulated over 90 million monthly active players, and had sold over 150 million units across all platforms.

Last week, Minecraft update 19w13a removed all references to Minecraft creator Markus “Notch” Persson from the game’s splash screens, most likely due to the content of his Twitter account.

If you’re looking for a Minecraft-like experience to dip your toe into, you can give Boundless a whirl. It’s a cross between No Man’s Sky and Minecraft, and we got Simon Miller to sit down and play it, and he loved it.

When you think of ray tracing, games like Battlefield V and Shadow of the Tomb Raider come to mind. But what about Minecraft? Not even in the same league, right?

That’s where you’d be wrong. The “path tracing” rendering method utilized in the latest build of Sonic Ether’s Unbelievable Shaders (SEUS) looks just like ray tracing, and may be the best Minecraft has ever actually looked.

Artist @notglacier went on Twitter to post a few intriguing videos of how much of a staggering difference the effects make, with light beams, reflections, and other realistic additions that make the blocky sandbox game look more like a critically-acclaimed graphical powerhouse.

Excuse the language, and we hope this individual isn’t actually defecating on themselves (April Fools’!) but check out these sweet graphics: 

notglacier@notglacier

they added ray tracing in the new minecraft shader dev build i am absolutely shitting myself56.4K12:21 PM – Mar 30, 201917.4K people are talking about thisTwitter Ads info and privacy

You can run Minecraft on just about anything, but if you want to run this shader pack, you’re going to need something more substantial. For example, @Notglacier used a GTX 1070Ti to get these effects, so if you’re interested in something similar, it may be time to upgrade.

notglacier@notglacierReplying to @notglacier

Messing around a bit more

you can do indirect lighting and stuff now6,0931:14 PM – Mar 30, 20191,030 people are talking about thisTwitter Ads info and privacy

If you think you’d like to give your copy of Minecraft quite the substantial upgrade, you can download the shader pack via Sonic Ether’s Patreon if you offer up some backer money. If you want to see these and other cool packs from the modder in the future, it’s well worth throwing some money their way.

Shout out to 60days for bringing this to our attention with his Chatty thread.

The popular sandbox building game has become a medium for telling biblical narratives.

Minecraft is a video game that captures the imaginations of children and adults alike, allowing them a free rein in a world in which they can build just about anything they can dream up. The freedom of gameplay featured by the popular title has redefined the Sandbox RPG genre and people have designed some impressive structures, cities, and yes, even the Millennium Falcon.

Now groups of faithful Minecrafters are turning their efforts towards evangelization, opening YouTube channels that depict biblical narratives through the 64-bit medium and producing Minecraft-themed Bibles, which  are starting to make their way into schools.

In Jersey, England, a recent donation saw 24 primary schools fully stocked with The Unofficial Bible for Minecrafters – Stories from the Bible told block by block. This book illustrates the scriptures with screen shots of biblical scenes recreated inside of the game. The images taken from in the game are arranged in comic book form and follow narratives of some of the more famous biblical stories, like the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Ark.

Trudie De La Haye, Head Teacher of St John’s School and a recipient of Minecraft Bibles, told Bailiwick Express that the Bible stories are retold in block form and describe events using Minecraft features and humor, which she believes will further engage the students.

On Youtube, another platform easily accessible to children, several channels are devoted to retelling Bible stories with the cute, low-definition blocks. One of our favorites is Pixel Heart Bible, a group that has covered 10 biblical stories including Noah’s Ark, The Easter Story, David and Goliath, and even the Nativity in two parts (Part 1, Part 2).

Since they condense the stories into 3-6 minute videos, they do become a little simplified and feel a bit abridged, but they’re very cute and the writers use rhyme schemes to lend a Dr. Seuss quality. The videos are also interspersed with innocent humor, which often shows off an exceptionally built scenery. One of our favorites from Pixel Heart Bible is their telling of the Prodigal Son:

The Crafted Church is another such channel that produces videos with meticulously designed scenery. They only have an abridgement of Christ’s ministry and the story Jonah, but the work they did was impressive. Similarly to the Pixel Heart Bible, The Crafted Church intersperses a bit of family-friendly comedy into their videos in order to better engage their audience. The church they built for the beginning of their videos is really nice, too.

As an honorable mention, we’d like to point out this high-quality recreation of the Book of Job, which was originally a sophomore English project, by Rapheal Clark, Eric York, Zach Burrell and Adam Kindorf. The setting is beautiful and the editing had to have taken a while to get this good.

Tags:BIBLESCRIPTURE

The Minecraft Marketplace once again had a huge month. Fans showed up for 3,320,063 free and premium downloads through the in-game store. That’s down from 4.56 million in January and 10.8 million in December. But year-over-year, downloads increased 791 percent from 372,509 downloads.

That huge growth has come due in part to the attention that Microsoft and The Minecraft Team are giving the service. The developer has added features like search and real-money prices. And the team has also worked to regularly deliver free content to keep people coming back.Recommended videosPowered by AnyClipFortnite-Themed Xbox One May Be In The WorksPlayUnmuteCurrent Time 0:01/Duration 0:30Loaded: 100.00% FullscreenUp Next

All of that has paid off, and now the Minecraft Marketplace’s future seems very bright.

Let’s get to the charts.

Top 10 most downloaded

 7. Dragons

1. Legacy Skin Pack by Minecraft

“Get cracking with these starter skins and old favorites brought over from Minecraft editions of yore. Widen your wardrobe, turn out in a tux, or rock it as a croc.”

2. Purple Parrot Party Palace by Minecraft

“A celebration of all things purple parrot party and palace. Master the mechanics of fireworks, armor stands, jukeboxes, and banners. Traverse a jungle island to find a massive parrot temple. Part tutorial and part adventure, this map will make your parrot dance.”

3. Grid Runners by Noxcrew

“Take on Noxcrew’s Grid Runners: a mini-game map made of classic Minecraft challenges where you can craft, mine, and jump your way to victory. Compete against the clock for the fastest times and team up with all of your friends to find out who is the ultimate Minecraft champion. This is a free map created exclusively for Minecon Earth 2018.”

4. Abstraction: Minecon Earth by Jigarbov Productions

“Featuring the logos that were just begging to be played on, MineCon Earth has floating landmasses with a surprising amount of hidden secrets and challenges.”

5. Pet Shop by Pixelheads

“Welcome to Pet Shop. Choose between 17 lovely pets. Explore a town and earn coins by collecting poop or by catching stray animals. Play fetch with dogs, trim a poodle, or take a snake for a walk. Cats, hamsters, lizards, poodles, capuchin monkeys, snails, hedgehogs, snakes, German shepherds, parakeets, penguins, rats, piggies, ferrets, koalas, chameleons, and rottweilers.”

6. Luxury Life by Pixelheads

“Luxury Life is a world where you role-play life as a billionaire. Cruise the streets in a sports car or any of the 10 other vehicles, explore luxurious mansions and decorate with furniture!”

7. Dragons by InPvP

“Take one of six dragons to the skies and become a legendary dragon rider. Surprise your enemies with custom attacks. Shoot fireballs and drop TNT. Explore three huge castles and the beautiful custom landscape.”

8. Advanced Farming by GameMode One

“Farm your heart out with new machines, vehicles, animals, pets, vendors, characters, and lands to explore. Fully functioning machines and vehicles. New and improved farm animals. Huge custom farm and ranch. A peaceful and relaxing roleplay countryside experience. Progress through the economy and optimize your farm.”

9. Steven Universe Mash-Up by Minecraft

“Steven enters the Minecraft universe in this Diamond-worth mash-up. Contains Steven Universe themed skins, textures, and original music from the show and all your favorite locations, from Beach City to Homeworld. Believe in Steven.”

10. City Life by Pixelheads

“Cruise through the big city in City Life! Chase down a bandit in your police car, save the day as a firefighter or take your dog for a walk.”

Top 10 highest grossing

 7. City Mash-Up

1. Pet Shop by Pixelheads

“Welcome to Pet Shop. Choose between 17 lovely pets. Explore a town and earn coins by collecting poop or by catching stray animals. Play fetch with dogs, trim a poodle, or take a snake for a walk. Cats, hamsters, lizards, poodles, capuchin monkeys, snails, hedgehogs, snakes, German shepherds, parakeets, penguins, rats, piggies, ferrets, koalas, chameleons, and rottweilers.”

2. Advanced Farming by GameMode One

“Farm your heart out with new machines, vehicles, animals, pets, vendors, characters, and lands to explore. Fully functioning machines and vehicles. New and improved farm animals. Huge custom farm and ranch. A peaceful and relaxing roleplay countryside experience. Progress through the economy and optimize your farm.”

3. Luxury Life by Pixelheads

“Luxury Life is a world where you role-play life as a billionaire. Cruise the streets in a sports car or any of the 10 other vehicles, explore luxurious mansions and decorate with furniture!”

4. Steven Universe Mash-Up by Minecraft

“Steven enters the Minecraft universe in this Diamond-worth mash-up. Contains Steven Universe themed skins, textures, and original music from the show and all your favorite locations, from Beach City to Homeworld. Believe in Steven.”

5. Dragons by InPvP

“Take one of six dragons to the skies and become a legendary dragon rider. Surprise your enemies with custom attacks. Shoot fireballs and drop TNT. Explore three huge castles and the beautiful custom landscape.”

6. City Life by Pixelheads

“Cruise through the big city in City Life! Chase down a bandit in your police car, save the day as a firefighter or take your dog for a walk.”

7. City Mash-Up by Everbloom Studios

“With over 1,000 hand-detailed rooms, there are stories, secrets, and mini-games around every corner. Build with the city’s full texture pack in your own worlds or take on any role you can imagine!”

8. Dinosaur Island by Pixelheads

“This once-idyllic island has been overrun by prehistoric beasts after the scientists lost control of their genetic experiments. Explore and discover the hidden mysteries of this intriguing island in a completely new adventure on Dinosaur Island.”

9. CampCraft by Blockworks

“A vast wilderness awaits you and your friends in CampCraft. Discover forest animals, ride camper vans, toast marshmallows, sit around the campfire, and set up your own camp.”

10. Shopping Time by Cyclone Designs

“It’s shopping time. Spend emeralds around town to buy furniture, cars, bikes, boats, pets, and much more. Decorate a pre-built house or build your own in a vacant plot and let your creativity and imagination flow.”

The final Minecraft update for Wii U, Xbox 360, PS3, and PlayStation Vita will release this week. It is a bittersweet moment for all players as 4J Studios is ending all support for those last-generation platforms. The update will arrive today, December 18, for some platforms and tomorrow, December 19, for other platforms. All of the other platforms are also receiving the update, too.

The final Minecraft update for those systems is The Nightmare Before Christmas update. The update brings spooky goodies like a Nightmare Before Christmas mash-up pack, fixes for various crashes as you would expect, and more. In addition, it also brings the end of support for those platforms. However, 4J Studios gave no word on online support so we expect the servers to remain online for the time being.

Final Minecraft Update Details

If you haven’t upgraded your Minecraft game from those older platforms to their newer counterparts, now is a great time. This is especially true given that the same update will be also released on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Nintendo Switch this week. If you’re wondering what the exact update versions are for those older platforms, we’ve got those as well.

For Xbox 360 players, it is known as Title Update 73. On Wii U, it is known as Title Update 42. Finally, on PS3 and PlayStation Vita, it is known as version 1.82. Interestingly enough, there was no information given on future support for the Nintendo 3DS version of Minecraft. That version was released after all four of the ill-fated versions so it remains to be seen what will happen to it.

On a more bittersweet note, 4J Studios also tweeted out a photo of the studio packing up all of their PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U, and PlayStation Vita development kits. Now that support for those versions is done, it seems there is no need for the kits anymore.

Marcus “Notch” Persson will be forever known as the creator of Minecraft. The game is currently one of the most popular indie-to-mainstream games in history. However, it seems like Notch’s legacy will be erased from the laurels of history. In a recent update by Mojang, many references to Marcus were deleted from the game.

Mojang Deletes Minecraft Creator’s References from the Game

Mojang recently released an update for Minecraft. The update removed all references to Notch on the game’s main screen. As such, messages like “Made by Notch!”, “The Work of Notch!”, or “110813!” were deleted from the game. For those curious, 110813 is actually the date of Marcus’s own wedding.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Marcus “Notch” Persson’s name was removed from Minecraft entirely. In fact, the name of the game’s creator will continue appearing on the game’s credits sequence. Not only that, the update has only been applied to the Bedrock version of the game. However, 4J Studios seems to be working on a patch for the console version.

A small update for Minecraft: Console Editions will be rolling out over the next few days to make some changes to splash text.6809:00 PM – Mar 19, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy198 people are talking about this

It’s certainly not strange to see this sort of development happen. Marcus stopped working on Minecraft ever since 2014. Back then, Notch sold the rights of the game to Microsoft in exchange of $2.5 Million USD. Ever since then, Mojang and Microsoft have been in charge of the creative sandbox game. Nowadays, the game is available for PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, iOS, Android, and even last gen consoles!

Why do you think Notch’s references were removed from Minecraft? Do you think Mojang should’ve been able to do this to begin with? What are your favorite things to do in the game? What’s your opinion on Minecraft? Do you own the game in any of the consoles? Let us know your thoughts on the VGR Forums and stay tuned for more news and updates.

While everyone can’t stop talking about Apex Legends and Fortnite, Minecraftcontinues to be one of the most played games in the world. Microsoft revealed today that the block-building phenomenon still has more than 91 million monthly active players. For comparison, Epic Games said Fortnite has 78 million monthly active players back in September.

Minecraft has ascended into a gaming institution like Pokémon. And now, Microsoft is adding Minecraft to Xbox Game Pass. For $10 per month, you can get Halo: The Master Chief Collection, Crackdown 3, and — beginning April 4 — Minecraft.

“Since its launch in 2009, the Minecraft community has remained one of the most active and passionate in gaming, attracting over 91 million players [each month] of all ages from virtually every country in the world,” Xbox Game Pass marketing boss Parimal Deshpande said. “Those joining through Xbox Game Pass will enter a vibrant, global community that plays across 20 unique platforms like Windows 10, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and mobile.”

More people for Minecraft Marketplace

Minecraft is not free-to-play, but it still seems ubiquitous. But by adding Minecraft to Game Pass, Microsoft could amplify that effect. And it is simultaneously boosting Games while exposing more people to Minecraft’s in-game store.

“Xbox Game Pass players will also gain access to an ever-expanding array of content for purchase via the in-game Minecraft Marketplace,” said Deshpande. “[The Marketplace] contains over 1,000 pieces of content from 60 distinct creators.”

The Minecraft Marketplace is a major focus for Micorosft. It treats it more as an ongoing service. That’s why it’s available everywhere and supports cross-play. And enabling community creators to build and sell content is a part of that. This ensures the game continues to make revenue and players have an abundance of fresh content beyond The Minecraft Team’s frequent updates.

And now Game Pass players can hop into Minecraft without spending any extra money, and they may end up spending cash in the Marketplace instead.

The Minecraft Marketplace once again had a huge month. Fans showed up for 3,320,063 free and premium downloads through the in-game store. That’s down from 4.56 million in January and 10.8 million in December. But year-over-year, downloads increased 791 percent from 372,509 downloads.

That huge growth has come due in part to the attention that Microsoft and The Minecraft Team are giving the service. The developer has added features like search and real-money prices. And the team has also worked to regularly deliver free content to keep people coming back.

All of that has paid off, and now the Minecraft Marketplace’s future seems very bright.

Let’s get to the charts.

Top 10 most downloaded

Click to view slideshow.

1. Legacy Skin Pack by Minecraft

“Get cracking with these starter skins and old favorites brought over from Minecraft editions of yore. Widen your wardrobe, turn out in a tux, or rock it as a croc.”

2. Purple Parrot Party Palace by Minecraft

“A celebration of all things purple parrot party and palace. Master the mechanics of fireworks, armor stands, jukeboxes, and banners. Traverse a jungle island to find a massive parrot temple. Part tutorial and part adventure, this map will make your parrot dance.”

3. Grid Runners by Noxcrew

“Take on Noxcrew’s Grid Runners: a mini-game map made of classic Minecraft challenges where you can craft, mine, and jump your way to victory. Compete against the clock for the fastest times and team up with all of your friends to find out who is the ultimate Minecraft champion. This is a free map created exclusively for Minecon Earth 2018.”

4. Abstraction: Minecon Earth by Jigarbov Productions

“Featuring the logos that were just begging to be played on, MineCon Earth has floating landmasses with a surprising amount of hidden secrets and challenges.”

5. Pet Shop by Pixelheads

“Welcome to Pet Shop. Choose between 17 lovely pets. Explore a town and earn coins by collecting poop or by catching stray animals. Play fetch with dogs, trim a poodle, or take a snake for a walk. Cats, hamsters, lizards, poodles, capuchin monkeys, snails, hedgehogs, snakes, German shepherds, parakeets, penguins, rats, piggies, ferrets, koalas, chameleons, and rottweilers.”

6. Luxury Life by Pixelheads

“Luxury Life is a world where you role-play life as a billionaire. Cruise the streets in a sports car or any of the 10 other vehicles, explore luxurious mansions and decorate with furniture!”

7. Dragons by InPvP

“Take one of six dragons to the skies and become a legendary dragon rider. Surprise your enemies with custom attacks. Shoot fireballs and drop TNT. Explore three huge castles and the beautiful custom landscape.”

8. Advanced Farming by GameMode One

“Farm your heart out with new machines, vehicles, animals, pets, vendors, characters, and lands to explore. Fully functioning machines and vehicles. New and improved farm animals. Huge custom farm and ranch. A peaceful and relaxing roleplay countryside experience. Progress through the economy and optimize your farm.”

9. Steven Universe Mash-Up by Minecraft

“Steven enters the Minecraft universe in this Diamond-worth mash-up. Contains Steven Universe themed skins, textures, and original music from the show and all your favorite locations, from Beach City to Homeworld. Believe in Steven.”

10. City Life by Pixelheads

“Cruise through the big city in City Life! Chase down a bandit in your police car, save the day as a firefighter or take your dog for a walk.”

Top 10 highest grossing

Click to view slideshow.

1. Pet Shop by Pixelheads

“Welcome to Pet Shop. Choose between 17 lovely pets. Explore a town and earn coins by collecting poop or by catching stray animals. Play fetch with dogs, trim a poodle, or take a snake for a walk. Cats, hamsters, lizards, poodles, capuchin monkeys, snails, hedgehogs, snakes, German shepherds, parakeets, penguins, rats, piggies, ferrets, koalas, chameleons, and rottweilers.”

2. Advanced Farming by GameMode One

“Farm your heart out with new machines, vehicles, animals, pets, vendors, characters, and lands to explore. Fully functioning machines and vehicles. New and improved farm animals. Huge custom farm and ranch. A peaceful and relaxing roleplay countryside experience. Progress through the economy and optimize your farm.”

3. Luxury Life by Pixelheads

“Luxury Life is a world where you role-play life as a billionaire. Cruise the streets in a sports car or any of the 10 other vehicles, explore luxurious mansions and decorate with furniture!”

4. Steven Universe Mash-Up by Minecraft

“Steven enters the Minecraft universe in this Diamond-worth mash-up. Contains Steven Universe themed skins, textures, and original music from the show and all your favorite locations, from Beach City to Homeworld. Believe in Steven.”

5. Dragons by InPvP

“Take one of six dragons to the skies and become a legendary dragon rider. Surprise your enemies with custom attacks. Shoot fireballs and drop TNT. Explore three huge castles and the beautiful custom landscape.”

6. City Life by Pixelheads

“Cruise through the big city in City Life! Chase down a bandit in your police car, save the day as a firefighter or take your dog for a walk.”

7. City Mash-Up by Everbloom Studios

“With over 1,000 hand-detailed rooms, there are stories, secrets, and mini-games around every corner. Build with the city’s full texture pack in your own worlds or take on any role you can imagine!”

8. Dinosaur Island by Pixelheads

“This once-idyllic island has been overrun by prehistoric beasts after the scientists lost control of their genetic experiments. Explore and discover the hidden mysteries of this intriguing island in a completely new adventure on Dinosaur Island.”

9. CampCraft by Blockworks

“A vast wilderness awaits you and your friends in CampCraft. Discover forest animals, ride camper vans, toast marshmallows, sit around the campfire, and set up your own camp.”

10. Shopping Time by Cyclone Designs

“It’s shopping time. Spend emeralds around town to buy furniture, cars, bikes, boats, pets, and much more. Decorate a pre-built house or build your own in a vacant plot and let your creativity and imagination flow.”

As the military buffs among you might have guessed from the name, Locked On introduces a brand new radar system. Various tanks, choppers, helicopters, and ground units benefit from the addition and are now able to scan the skies and detect hostile activity. Using this powerful new tool makes you visible to enemies, however, so you may want to occasionally forego the advantages it brings and turn the damn attention-bringing thing off.

Of the vehicular skirmish games out in the wild, few are as expansive as War Thunder – players have been battling across land, air, and sea since 2013. That’s a whole lot of warfare, but developer Gaijin Entertainment is rather good at keeping its fuel tank full – the latest top up comes courtesy of update 1.87, titled Locked On.

Update 1.87 also gives you access to somewhere in the region of 30 new vehicles. There are French helicopters, all manner of cruisers, a Japanese supersonic jet, the M1A1 Abrams tank, and the Soviet 2S6 Tunguska – the very first surface-to-air missile system (SAM) in the game.

On top of all of this there are also two new maps, so War Thunder’s latest update gives you loads of reasons to jump back into the cockpit.

GO FULL THROTTLE IN A SUPERSONIC JET

War Thunder has a new fastest jet: the Japanese Mitsubishi T-2. This imposing piece of hardware can reach an incredible mach 1.6, so if you ever invite it to a party, expect it to turn up about a week early. You’ll feel the speed in your heart, chest, and violently rippling cheeks, so make sure to bring a sick bag.

To level the playing field somewhat, update 1.87 also gives AA gunners a leg up. If you’re trying to tag a jet from an anti-aircraft gun, fear not, because you’ll now find a HUD that lets you track and lead more effectively. Just shoot at the little green icon that appears ahead of the aircraft and you’ll counter the intense speed on show.

SCAN THE SKIES WITH RADAR

Locked On adds the aforementioned radar system to an array of vehicles, including tanks, aircraft, and choppers. If you’re on the ground, radio detection is designed to safeguard your forces, helping you track and ultimately destroy aerial threats. But ground forces don’t get to have all the fun because aircraft and helicopters receive alerts whenever someone spots them.

Essentially, pilots have radar for the radar: aces are warned if they’re about to be shot out the sky, giving them enough time to evade an attack. In response, anti-aircraft vehicles can disable their radar to go radio silent and disappear from scanners in the sky. This tense electronic warfare adds a whole new dynamic to War Thunder’s pitched battles.

BLAST OPPONENTS WITH SURFACE-TO-AIR MISSILES

A tracked SPAAW (self-propelled anti-aircraft weapon), the Soviet 2S6 Tunguska is a formidable beast. Armed with eight 9M311 SAM missiles it’ll soon put a dent in your opponents’ so-called air supremacy. If you see anything moving in the clouds, this 35 tonne bit of kit gives you full license to engage it. Unless it’s a bird, of course. There’s no need to kill birds.

You’re not strictly limited to aircraft, though. The Tunguska is able to combat armoured ground vehicles, too. Hey, missiles don’t discriminate – if you point one at something, it’s bound to blow up.

BATTLE IN NEW LOCATIONS

Finally, update 1.87 offers two new combined-arms locations. First up is the Alaska map, which plays host to some of the most intense fighting yet seen in the game. It’s a delightful combination of wide city streets that are perfect for rampaging tanks, and dense surrounding forests where precise driving and a keen sense of direction are key.

Second is Coral Islands, a gorgeous playground based in the Pacific. This setting is designed to give fleet vessels and aircraft a rush as they engage each other around a rocky atoll. Okay, that’s it from us – best of luck out there!

Launched in 2013, Warface is a military shooter built on a bedrock of satisfying gunplay, slick movement, and sharp visuals. That probably comes as little surprise given that it was originally created by Crytek, but the game has proven so successful that the development team has formed its own studio called Blackwood Games. Working closely with publisher My.com, Blackwood ensures Warface always offers fierce firefights, an array of competitive modes, and a set of engaging story-led cooperative missions.

This confection has been crafted in CryEngine 3.5, a rather powerful but convincingly scalable bit of tech. Thanks to that foundation, Warface runs well on a wide range of rigs and looks great doing so. This is the engine behind Crysis, after all, and it’s a boon to get those fantastic visuals – and the infamous nanosuit itself – in a free-to-play game.

On top of all that, a healthy stream of free updates ensures that Warface frequently provides fresh and exciting new stuff to see and do. That helps pull in the punters, of course, which means there’s always plenty of human targets waiting for your bullets. It all adds up to a package that offers a little more than your average free-to-play effort, and we’re going to show you why that’s the case.

EMBARK ON PVE MISSIONS WITH YOUR SQUAD

There are many free-to-play shooters vying for your time, but few offer dedicated co-op campaigns. Warface does, and this variety makes it stand out from the crowd. Its story-driven PvE mode consists of nine special operations that test your five-person squad’s reactions and tactics. One such operation, The Great White, is a wave-based survival mission set in a glimmering glass and chrome skyscraper. Alternatively, you could try your hand at Anubis, in which you must destroy a cyborg factory inside an Egyptian pyramid. For an even hotter time, give Volcano a go, where your team launches an attack on an African research station before having a showdown with a security turret called Ursula. She’s very upset and cries bullets.

Each mission is replayable, offering different rewards at higher difficulties. For example, normal mode provides twice the amount of rewards easy does, but according to the stats just 7% of all squads are successful – so you’d best prepare yourself for a challenge. The most able players can double their currency rewards in pro mode, where enemies that deal enormous damage call for intimate class knowledge and coordinated teamwork. Given the odds offered for success in normal, however, we don’t fancy our chances much.

IT’S GOT BATTLE ROYALE

Battle royale is all the rage now, and Warface has joined the party. The mode takes the game’s robust mechanics and applies them to the familiar every-person-for-themselves setup, although there’s slightly less jumping out of buses in this one. Featuring 32 players fighting for survival, it may be smaller than the traditional 100-player versions of the mode you’re used to, but it’s the biggest skirmish Warface has seen to date, and it gives you a large-scale alternative to the game’s signature tight, close-quarters matches.

Warface’s take on battle royale was originally limited to Mojave, a desert map baking under the hot sun, but the mode has since extended to the Pripyat-set Exclusion Zone map, too. The devastation wrought by Chernobyl works as great lore for Exclusion Zone, with radioactive particles spread by a massive storm shrinking the playable area until there’s just one soldier left. While battle royale is only one part of Warface, it could be the mode that draws you in first.

WAGE WAR ACROSS 20 MAPS AND TEN MODES

Warface’s PvP offers exactly the kind of multiplayer mayhem you’d expect from a development team that honed its craft on Crysis. And thanks to constant support and updates, the game’s community has remained consistently active, meaning you’ll always be able to find a game.

Competitive players can do battle across ten different modes, from the aforementioned Battle Royale, to classic picks such as Team Deathmatch and Plant the Bomb. Also in the mix are more inventive modes such as Storm, in which the attacking team must capture specific objectives as the defenders attempt to disrupt them, and Destruction, where you utilise radios to call airstrikes on opposition bases.

In terms of locations, there’s a generous smattering of oil depots, hangers, farms, forests, and downtown districts across Warface’s 20 maps. Collectively they offer a good mix of close, medium, and long-range encounters, which helps the game feel fresh and varied from match to match. There are plenty of good hiding spots, too.

IT REALLY IS COMPLETELY FREE TO PLAY

You don’t have to buy a single unit of currency to enjoy Warface, which is nice. There’s no restrictive paywall, and you won’t be swamped with prompts to buy anything. However, should you choose to, you can spend the in-game currency you earn through playing on a variety of items in the microtransaction store.

Completing PvP matches or PvE missions rewards you with currency, which is used to rent weapons, buy armour, and obtain new skins. Vendor Points fuel progression through the Arsenal tree, which features three categories of weapons, attachments, and equipment. You’ll earn all this currency at a steady rate, but if you want to speed up the process, you can purchase VIP Booster packs with premium currency. Crucially, however, this is always optional and never mandatory.

REGULAR UPDATES KEEP YOU COMING BACK

Blackwood Games continually updates Warface to give players new and interesting content. The most recent addition is the new Sanctuary map, which features beautiful pink blossom trees, a cascading waterfall, and a well-tended rock garden. It’s the perfect tranquil paradise in which to open fire. And talking of weapons, a devastating SAP-6 pump-action shotgun that knocks enemies flying is now available.

Modes refresh too, with new challenges added daily to the PvE missions. There’s also a regular stream of weapon and body skins to help you stand out. We’re partial to the Crysis Nanosuit ourselves, which acts as a nostalgic nod to the development team’s past at Crytek. Oh, and for an extra incentive, you also get daily login bundles of cash and items. Warfaceis truly a living game, because there’s something new to try every day. We’ll see you online.