The 'banana republic simulator' Tropico 6 has been delayed until late March
- By Ash
- in News
Tropico 6 was originally supposed to arrive this January 25th, but after seeing a variety of bugs and issues pop up throughout the beta, the developers have now decided to push the launch date back. The new release date has been set for March 29th, and in order to make the wait a bit more bearable, the developers have also announced that everyone who pre-ordered before January 10th will be given the first DLC entirely free of change!
"Over the holidays, I have played Tropico 6 for many hours and really liked what I saw," reads the official update. "But, in my humble opinion, it is not enough to like a game – I want to love it! And Tropico 6 is good, but not very good, or outstanding. Yet."
Artifact update has now greatly increased the speed of matches
- By Ash
- in News
While Artifact is still in dire need of major updates, you might be glad to hear that Valve has now finally increased the speed of matches. The tournament timer now grants only 30 seconds per round (down from 1 minute) and starts at 2:30 (down from 3:00), while the standard timer now only grants 1 minute per round (down from 2) and starts at 3:00 (down from 5:00). Furthermore, in order to make complex decks more manageable under the new system, each time you receive the coin the clock will be extended by 5 seconds.
Draft and Constructed gauntlets will now use the tournament timer rather than the standard timer, while the Call to Arms and Global Matchmaking will continue to use the now-updated standard timer. While these are relatively small changes in the grand scheme of things, they should hopefully prevent some Artifact matches from dragging on forever, as well as make the whole thing a bit less mentally taxing.
The Resident Evil 2 remake now has a free 30-minute demo on both PC and consoles
- By Ash
- in News
The Resident Evil 2 remake will be making its way to both PC and consoles this January 25th, bringing with it a whole host of improvements and changes over the original. You can expect to see greatly enhanced visuals and audio, better voice acting, support for modern resolutions and 60 FPS, as well as some rather significant tweaks to the movement and combat controls.
If you're wondering what all of this looks like in gameplay terms, as well as whether the Resident Evil 2 remake is able to match up to its predecessor, I am glad to say that you can now easily find out by playing the free demo. Simply head on over to Steam (or your console's marketplace) before January 31st, and you'll be mess around with the "1-Shot Demo" after a brief download.
Vermintide 2's next major update will be arriving in early March
- By Ash
- in News
In order to celebrate Vermintide 2's latest milestone, more than two million copies sold, developer Fatshark has now announced that Vermintide 2 will be getting a lot more content throughout this year. While no details have been given just yet, the first of these major updates will be arriving this March 8th.
If you're willing to indulge a bit of speculation, I would say that this content update will likely bring with it the third map-based DLC. Fatshark said a while back that they are working on both original and remastered Vermintide 1 maps, and with the Back to Ubersreik DLC already here and accounted for, this only leaves the brand new maps. If this does end up being the case, I can only hope March 8th will continue the current trend and bring out some extremely well designed maps!
After numerous teasers, the puzzle-platformer Catherine has now suddenly appeared on Steam
- By Ash
- in News
If you were following the gaming news this past week, chances are you've seen at least one teaser or rumor about the PC version of Catherine. Numerous games like Bayonetta and Valkyria Chronicles were getting invaded by sheep, two different rating organizations updated their listings in order to include a PC version, and the list goes on. It really did seem like we would finally get an announcement about the PC version of Catherine at some point this week!
Well, that announcement did now arrive, but in a bit of a different shape than most people expected. You see, ATLUS and SEGA didn't just reveal the PC version of Catherine, they straight up released it without sending even a word of warning beforehand! So if you're up for playing the somewhat messed up puzzle-platformer, simply head on over to Steam and you'll be climbing dream-towers in no time.
All of the cards for Magic: The Gathering's Ravnica Allegiance expansion have now been revealed
- By Ash
- in News
Whether you're a fan of MTG Arena or the physical version of Magic: The Gathering, you might be glad to hear that the brand new Ravnica Allegiance expansion is just around the corner. To be more specific, MTG Arena will be getting the Orzhov, Gruul, Simic, Azorious and Rakdos guilds this January 17th, while the physical version will be getting fully released a week later.
As far as the cards themselves are concerned, Ravnica Allegiance will bring with it 259 new cards (111 commons, 80 uncommonas, 53 rares and 15 mythic rares), though that number is slightly inflated due to all of the guild gates, lockets and dual-colored lands. Still, this a lot of new cards, and given the focus on multiple colors I fully expect Ravnica Allegiance to enable not only more dual-colored decks, but also triple-colored ones as well!
Hitman: Blood Money and Absolution have now received an HD remaster on Xbox and PlayStation
- By Ash
- in News
If you're up for experiencing a new and improved version of one of the best Hitman games out there, as well as one of the most controversial, you might want to check out the newly released Hitman HD Enhanced Collection. As you can probably guess already, the collection contains HD remasters of both Hitman: Blood Money and Hitman: Absolution.
You can expect to see support for resolutions up to 4K, the ability to play at 60 FPS, spruced up visuals, as well as greatly improved lighting. For those of you that love the classic Hitman: Blood Money, I'm also glad to say that the HD Enhanced Collection has brought in a couple of updates to the controls, which should help make the whole experience just a bit less clunky.
Besides the rather high price, the one catch here is that the HD Enhanced Collection is not currently available on PC. Whether it's going to arrive at all, I'm afraid I don't know, but given Blood Money's popularity I can only imagine that IO Interactive will eventually get to making a fully fledged PC remaster.