14 DAY TRIAL // This week, the review department of Softpedia Games evaluates the following titles: Risk of Rain, an interesting indie release with some unique mechanics, The Walking Dead: Season Two – Episode 1, the new Telltale Games experience, Unity of Command: Black Turn, a turn-based strategy with great ideas, Journey of a Roach, Total War: Rome II – Caesar in Gaul and Max: The Curse of Brotherhood.
We also have a rundown of the best games we played this year in a variety of categories in our Gamer Diary GOTY 2013.
The usual Weekend Reading features are also present: one talking about the future of microtransactions on the Xbox One as seen from the perspective of Forza Motorsport 5 and another about patches and fixes for modern games.
The EndWeekGame piece talks about the way we plan to entice our families to play during the coming holidays and we also have a selection of the most interesting news from the past seven-day period.
On Monday, a report revealed that the newly launched Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are being attacked more than 34,000 times a day by hackers while Turn 10 delivered an update for Forza Motorsport 5, which changes core elements of the economy.
On Tuesday, Valve teased the launch of a Winter Sale by offering some gamers access to snow globes when they craft badges and Microsoft commented on the parity clause for the indie games launched on the Xbox One.
On Wednesday, a free mode was added to Grand Theft Auto V alongside patch 1.08 and Disney announced a new Star Wars: Assault Squadrons title that focused on ship combat.
On Thursday, Valve launched the Winter Sale via Steam and Mojang announced that it would launch an Avengers skin pack for Minecraft on the Xbox 360.
On Friday, the open beta for Hearthstone was delayed and Blizzard announced that it would release Reaper of Souls for Diablo 3 on March 25, 2014.
On Saturday, a new event was launched for GTA Online and a video walkthrough was revealed for the Upload feature of the Xbox One.