This Week In PC Gaming is an easy way to catch up with all of the news that you might have missed this week, organized in such a way that you can get a brief overview on all of the stories and from there you can jump to the ones you're interested in. And if you are interested you can also find out what happened the previous week by going here.

This week started off on a really high note given the amount of new releases and announcements that came around Christmas and while the past few days of food-induced coma were rather non eventful there's still plenty of interesting games and announcements to talk about.

 Steam Winter Sale & Humble Square Enix Bundle 3 have begun (and are still ongoing)

The reason I've started this news roundup with a couple of sales is because they are both still ongoing so if you haven't checked either of them out now would be the time or you might miss out on some extremely cheap but quality games.

Rather than go over the offers in each one I'll just direct you to the links above where I've already singled out which games I believe are the best when it comes to both price and quality so if you're interested in picking up some games during this holiday season check these two sales out.

A whole bunch of games were announced this week as PC titles in 2016 so let's briefly go over each one:

Gears of War & Killer Instinct are coming in early 2016

Xbox head Phil Spencer announced that both Gears of War and Killer Instinct are coming to PC as early 2016 titles. While he didn't give out any specifics the fact that the head of the Xbox was confident enough to announce such a thing means that they are more or less finished and might even release in January.

Microsoft has been blabbering for over a decade about how they'll totally focus on PC this year but if these two end up being good PC ports there might actually be some truth to their claims this time around. And despite being a bit of a cynic given their previous treatment I'll remain hopeful that they've realized the PC and console ecosystems aren't mutually exclusive.

God Eater 1 & 2, One Piece: Burning Blood, Tales of Berseria are coming to PC

Ever since the great success of the Dark Souls petition Namco Bandai has been incredible when it comes to their treatment of the PC crowd. From basically none a couple of years ago all of their major series are now slowly transitioning to the PC. As a part of this transition the two God Eater games, previously console exclusive, are expected to show up on PC in the summer of 2016.

Tales of Berseria and One Piece: Burning Blood are newly announced titles that will be releasing simultaneously on both the PC and consoles. If you're interested in more information on any of these games I will once again direct you to the links in the title.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is coming in January

In an announcement that came absolutely out of nowhere Rise of the Tomb Raider has been set for a January release on Steam. No specifics on the date or system requirements have been released as of yet.

One thing bugs me however. When Rise of the Tomb Raider was announced as an Xbox exclusive they were constantly very elusive and for the lack of a better word shady with their answers about the PC/Playstation release which led many to believe that we won't be seeing Tomb Raider on the PC for a very long time. And now, only two months after the release of its Xbox versions RotTR is coming to PC so why the whole song and dance?

That Dragon, Cancer is coming January 12

That Dragon, Cancer is a game that takes you through the terrifying experience of having a child with cancer from the perspective of the parents that actually had to go through it themselves. The one happy note in all of this is that its coming out on January 12th, Joel's birthday, as a digital memorial for him and his struggles.

If you aren't in the mood to be emotionally drained I'd suggest not watching the trailer as it does quite a good job of pulling you in to their world and explaining what exactly they, as parents, had to go through.

Triad Wars is shutting down in January

Sleeping Dogs was an excellent GTA clone that took the formula, improved on it, and created a fun sanbox game with some great melee combat and a decent story to boot. So when I heard it was getting a sequel I couldn't be more excited, that is until I heard that it was going to be a "not really multiplayer" multiplayer game set in a small area of the game completely disregarding everything that made the original good.

Unfortunately for the Sleeping Dog franchise Triad Wars is shutting down in January but on a slightly positive note all in game purchases will be fully free until that date so if you ever wanted to give it a try now would be your best, and only time.

Upcoming Planetside 2 update will add base building, resource gathering and much more

I've spent over a hundred hours with Planetside 2 riding around with my Magrider (the hover-tank featured above) and it was a truly magical time, that is until SOE repeatedly nerfed my favorite little vehicle to the point where it was both incredibly weak and incredibly boring to use. The same sort of knee-jerk balancing was applied to every other area of the game and Planetside 2 slowly bled its once massive population.

Thankfully, after SOE separated from Sony and created Daybreak Games there was quite a big reshuffling of staff and a lot of the old Planetside 2 bigwigs got swapped out with fresh faces who instantly got to work on fixing the issues years of negligence have caused.

Given what their recent test realm patch contains it seems they are far more in tune with the community than the old team ever was and for the first time in over year I'm excited for Planetside 2 again.

Awesomenauts - Overdrive expansion announced

I was really in to Awesomenauts a year or so ago, it being one of the few MOBA games I can play without a full team of friends and still feel like I'm actually accomplishing anything, but I slowly phased it out as other games came along. What's great however is that even though I forgot it exists, the community in Awesomenauts has been apparently stable enough to warrant an expansion.

So I am happy to let you know that Awesomenauts - Overdrive has been announced bringing with it better graphics, three new heroes, better matchmaking and server stability, a new map and finally, a community designed hero.

The expected release date is in March 2016 and if you want a full overview of the features check out the link above.

Besides announcements for 2016 there were games released and updated in major ways this week as well:

Aviary Attorney has been released

Aviary Attorney is a visually stunning game that follows the stories of Monsieur Falcon and his witty partner Sparrowson as they take on court cases in 19th century Paris and try their very best to bumble towards justice.

The gameplay is split up in to two parts, in one you gather clues and interview individuals related to your case and in the other you present that information in a court of law in an effort to free your client from guilt.

If you want to find out more you can read my review linked above but in short I found myself enjoying it a lot.

Divinity: Original Sin is out on Mac, Linux & Steam OS

The enhanced edition that reworked much of the story, balance and graphics released on Windows a little while ago to much praise and now the same treatment has arrived to the Mac, Linux and Steam OS.

Divinity: Original Sin is a beautiful homage to oldschool CRPG games such as Baldur's gate or Icewind Dale and if you're an RPG fan I fully recommend it. Its biggest selling point however is the inclusion of co-op, something other games in the genre rarely have. So if you can, grab a friend and get Divinity during this Steam Winter Sale, it'll be a blast.

Grim Dawn is now content complete

Grim Dawn is an ARPG that has been in development for many years now, before Path of Exile or Diablo 3 were even specs on the horizon. It started off as a small pet project by a couple of old Titan Quest developers but after its Kickstarter campaign and Early Access release the scope and development speed increased rapidly.

And now, after all these years of waiting Grim Dawn is fully content complete after its latest update brought in the finale, tons of new legendary items, a new roguelike dungeon and much more.

You can find the full patch notes and an overview of the new changes in the link above.

Finally, two pieces of miscellaneous news:

Occulus Rift production is on schedule and the pre-orders will most likely open in January

In a conversation on twitter Palmer Luckey, original founder of Oculus VR, talked about the current progress of the Rift as well as when you can expect preorders to become available. Here are the full quotes:

"Thrilled to share some news: Manufacturing continues to go well, and we are still on-target for an awesome Rift launch in Q1!" "Preorders are coming soon after new year. Enjoy a stress-free holiday, we won't launch preorders without warning!"

As you can see he didn't mention January specifically so take my words with a grain of salt but I am relatively confident they will announce the preorders right after the team comes back from their holiday and works starts again as usual.

Final Fantasy VI mod removes the annoying blurry filter

A lot of Final Fantasy games have recently been ported, or announced, for the PC and most of them look like faithful adaptations of the original games. The Final Fantasy VI port is sadly not one of those games, instead it comes with completely re-done graphics that somehow manage to look worse than those found in the SNES version.

The most annoying thing of all was the smoothing filter that was applied to everything making the whole game a blurry mess. Thankfully, a modder by the name of Nyxo has managed to remove the filter and bring the game's graphics slightly closer to the original ones.

You can find further information and the download link above.

And that is another week done. I hope your holidays have been enjoyable and I will see you soon.