It's hard to believe I'm writing this in the year 2025 CE, but I've double-checked and it sure seems to be right so here we go: The Epic Games Store now supports preloading.

"Preloading is now available for PC pre-purchase products on the Epic Games Store!" developer Local Bald wrote in the Epic Games Store forums (via Reddit). "This new feature allows players to download titles they have pre-purchased up to five days (120 hours) prior to release via an encrypted build. Preloading ensures that players can jump into the game quickly on day one, which is especially beneficial for titles with large downloads."

Preloading is a practical feature but not very glamorous as these things go; what makes it notable here is that it's been available for years on Steam. Yet Epic, despite being hell-bent on breaking Steam's nigh-monopoly on the PC digital market, hasn't seen fit to add it until now.

And it's not as though Epic isn't aware that the absence of preloading, and other such mundane but useful features, is a problem. Epic CEO Tim Sweeney and EGS general manager Steve Allison both acknowledged in May of this year that the Epic Store sucks—or, as Allison put it more politically, that "there's still a ton of work to be done to deliver a world-class experience."

He's not wrong, but as PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens noted at the time, the Epic Store went live in December 2018, which means it's almost seven years old now, yet it still lacks a lot of functionality that we take for granted on Steam. And that doesn't get into issues with the Epic launcher, which Sweeney said is "clunky," a characterization I would describe as a tremendous understatement.

Epic has built a user base for its store primarily through its extremely generous weekly game giveaways, which has cost the company untold truckloads of cash, but I can't help thinking that by now, the thrill has worn off and it's time to start pouring some of those resources into the store itself. It's a little weird to be thinking of preloading functionality as a significant improvement, but for the Epic Store it is—and hopefully we'll be seeing more such baseline functionality following soon.

Mohrta is an incredibly cool, cryptic, sci-fi/fantasy FPS that once again proves there might just be no limit to what you can do on the venerable Doom (or GZDoom) engine. In a new trailer, developers Scumhead and Osiol have revealed that we don't have long to wait for the full game: Mohrta will release on Steam October 14.

There are so many new FPSes (and indie games in general) with retro throwback graphics and strange, "you won't find this in triple-A" art styles that it's harder than ever to stand out from the crowd. But Mohrta still caught my eye and won't let go. You play as some kind of interdimensional killing machine, an (allegedly) unfeeling assassin in head-to-toe armor that's part Jin-Roh, part Trench Crusade.

Their face is covered by a gas mask under a wide-brimmed helmet like a British WWI soldier, but the rest of the ensemble is all plate mail, and they carry an assortment of both medieval and modern weaponry. The demo showed off the sword, a fast-firing pistol, and a classic trench gun-style shotgun, while the trailers have previewed stranger fare like playing cards you throw like shuriken, a pile bunker, or dual flails.

Mohrta boasts a unique, decidedly un-Doom structure (more on that in a second), and its hub world really blew me away in the demo: A bazaar tucked away in a corner of some kind of interdimensional metropolis, with a look somewhere between Planescape, Morrowind, and The Fifth Element. The worlds you access from this hub are laid out similarly to Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 3, with each one boasting a unique look and, most impressively, slate of enemies.

Mohrta's demo showcases its version of a Green Hill Zone, the placid foothills of a forgotten heaven for warriors, the bucolic scenery interrupted by Greco-Roman ruins and skeletal enemies who have been buried for so long, they're caked with mud, moss, and mushrooms.

Worlds shown off from the full game include a Beksiński death wasteland and a desert with, what else, the industry-standard sand worm—but these ones are even weirder-looking than usual. I can't wait for this one, and you can wishlist Mohrta or check out its demo for yourself over on Steam.