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[Update #2]: Valve is also launching a free Portal-themed tech demo for the Steam Deck - Aperture Desk Job!
[Update]: It's official, the Steam Deck will be launching on February 25, 2022!
If you were hoping to get your hands on Valve's handheld gaming PC this holiday season, I'm afraid I have some bad news to deliver. Instead of launching at some point in December as previously stated, Valve has now pushed back the Steam Deck by at least two months.
"We’re sorry about this—we did our best to work around the global supply chain issues, but due to material shortages, components aren’t reaching our manufacturing facilities in time for us to meet our initial launch dates," explains the brief update. "Based on our updated build estimates, Steam Deck will start shipping to customers February 2022."
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[Update]: Elex 2 has now landed onto PC and consoles, and much like the original it's as entertaining as it is janky.
The original Elex was a game with a great deal of flaws, but also a great deal of heart. Much like the rest of Piranha Bytes' games it was a bit of a janky mess, but that was because it tried to do so many interesting things at once that some of them were bound to come out half-baked. Still, what it did well it did really well, and in the end I had a downright lovely time with Elex.
With all of that in mind, I'm very happy to say that Piranha Bytes have now revealed that the sequel will be arriving in early 2022! More specifically, you can expect to see Elex 2 land onto PC, PlayStation and Xbox on March 1, 2022.
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[Update #2]: World of Warcraft will finally be adding cross-faction dungeons, raids and rated PvP in Update 8.2.5!
[Update]: The big Update 9.2 - Eternity's End reveal has now arrived, and it's sadly a bit of a mixed bag.
Due to a variety of gameplay and story issues that were allowed to fester for many months, as well as the recent sexual harassment accusations that have slowed development down to a crawl, World of Warcraft is currently at the lowest point it has been in quite a few years. Things are slowly starting to look up, however, as the recent Update 9.1.5 has brought with it a whole bunch of long-requested improvements and quality-of-life changes.
With a bit of luck, that's only going to be the very tip of the iceberg as Blizzard has now begun teasing a major announcement! The first teaser over at Twitter shows a bunch of a bunch of cryptic runes, none of which seem to be related to the runes you might find throughout Azeroth or beyond.
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[Update #2]: Lengthy pre-launch preview for Tiny Tina's Wonderlands shows off some awesome locations and a bunch of bullet-spongy enemies.
[Update]: Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, the RPG spin-off inspired by Assault on Dragon Keep, will be launching on March 25, 2022.
In order to people excited for the upcoming Tiny Tina's Wonderlands action-RPG spin-off, as well as give everyone a chance to enjoy Borderlands 2's finest DLC, Gearbox has now released Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep as a standalone game, or rather as a "One-shot Adventure."
Best of all, the whole thing is entirely free to grab on the Epic Games Store until November 16, 2021. So if you're in the mood for a rather crazy adventure that pokes fun at RPGs while still being a surprisingly good one itself, Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands One-shot Adventure is well worth looking into, even if the title seems like it's trying to consume the rest of this paragraph.
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[Update]: Creative Assembly has now detailed Nurgle's pestilent campaign mechanics!
As a part of a recent announcement Creative Assembly has revealed that Total War: Warhammer 3's early adopter faction will be the eternally hungry Ogre Kingdoms. In order to eat your way across (or just through) the world all you'll have to do is grab Total War: Warhammer 3 within the first week of launch and you'll get the Ogre Kingdoms as a nice 'little' bonus.
If you're curious what sort of units they'll field, as well as just how their majestic bellies look up close, that you can find out through the recently posted preview. Have a gander:
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[Update #2]: Overwatch's annual Winter Wonderland event has now been announced alongside the second part of the comic!
[Update]: Overwatch has released some ridiculously over-the-top Experimental balance changes alongside the late November update.
Due to the various sexual harassment accusations, and Blizzard's new policy to remove any and all references to employees from their games, Overwatch's Jesse McCree was recently renamed to Cole Cassidy. This name change would've been the perfect time to also add some more lore for Overwatch's best gunslinger, but unfortunately the update was about as barebones as it gets.
With Overwatch 2 (and Diablo 4) getting delayed yet again, I fully expected we'd have to wait for quite a while before we found out anything about Cassidy and his troubled past. Well, I'm happy to say that I was completely wrong with that assumption, because Blizzard has now suddenly released the first of five short comics detailing Cassidy's past, as well as an accompanying in-game collection event.
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[Update #2]: After a few rounds of delays, Marvel's Midnight Suns has now landed onto PC and consoles.
[Update]: Firaxis has delayed Marvel's Midnight Suns yet again, this time to early 2023.
It's only been a short while since Marvel's Midnight Suns was first announced, and already it's being delayed. So if you're in the mood for some turn-based and card-driven superhero action, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until the second half of 2022.
"We know many fans were looking forward to playing the game originally next spring, and this decision did not come lightly," reads the brief update. "We decided to push our launch because we need more time to make this the best game possible."
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[Update #2]: The Devil In Me has now arrived onto PC with a heap of technical issues.
[Update]: Supermassive Games are working on a spiritual successor to Until Dawn - The Quarry.
While this might not come as a massive surprise given that its existence was revealed as a reward for getting the best ending in The Dark Pictures: House of Ashes, Bandai Namco and Supermassive Games have now come out to properly announce that the next game in the series, The Devil in Me, will also serve as the season one finale for the horror anthology.
The details are still few and far between, but so far it looks like we'll be following a film crew that's recording a documentary about America’s first serial killer, H.H. Holmes. Needless to say, things won't go exactly according to plan and our characters will end up having to overcome a series of Saw-like scenarios in order to survive.
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[Update #2]: Wrath of the Lich King Classic has been announced, and it will be launching in 2022 without the controversial Dungeon Finder.
[Update]: The fresh Season of Mastery servers have now arrived, and so far I'm happy to say everything seems to be working as expected.
In order to revitalize World of Warcraft Classic, Blizzard will be launching an assortment of fresh servers this November 16th alongside the Season of Mastery. However, unlike the original WoW Classic that mostly stuck to the "no changes" motto, the Season of Mastery servers will bring with them a variety of changes to help improve the overall experience.
Speaking of which, the experience required to reach level 60 will be getting reduced to Burning Crusade Classic levels, while many items available only in the latter portion of Classic's life will be dropping as soon as the servers launch. The most important addition here is the Dungeon Set 2 quest chain which awards amazing gear for quite a few classes and is easily achievable for even casual players.
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[Update]: The vampire-infested Innistrad: Crimson Vow has now been unleashed!
I hope you're in the mood for a bit of a shakeup, because MTG Arena's Innistrad: Crimson Vow expansion is set to launch this November 11th. Crimson Vow will bring with it an assortment of vampires and werewolves to toy around with, as well as a variety of zombies, spirits and other nightmarish aberrations to really round out the whole horror atmosphere.
When it comes to the actual gameplay mechanics, Crimson Vow will follow in Midnight Hunt's footsteps and will heavily focus on sacrificing creatures and artifacts, transforming between two states, and bringing things back out of the graveyard for extra value. Here's a brief rundown of the six main mechanics: