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[Update]: Overwatch's new Game Director Aaron Keller will be revealing some juicy Overwatch 2 PvP details on May 20, 2021!
If you're a fan of Overwatch, you might want to brace yourself as I have some rather sad news to deliver. Jeff Kaplan, a storied Blizzard veteran and one of the driving forces behind Overwatch, has now decided to leave the company.
"I am leaving Blizzard Entertainment after 19 amazing years," reads the surprisingly brief farewell message. "It was truly the honor of a lifetime to have the opportunity to create worlds and heroes for such a passionate audience. I want to express my deep appreciation to everyone at Blizzard who supported our games, our game teams and our players. But I want to say a special thanks to the wonderful game developers that shared in the journey of creation with me."
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[Update]: Resident Evil 4 VR is heading over to Oculus Quest 2 on October 21, 2021.
If you're a fan of Resident Evil 4 you might want to strap in as I bring both good and bad news in equal measure. The good news is that after years of begging from the Resident Evil community Capcom has now finally announced a VR remake of Resident Evil 4!
The bad news, however, is that Resident Evil 4 VR will be a Oculus Quest 2 exclusive. To be even more specific, Resident Evil 4 VR will not be making its way to any other VR device, including Oculus' previous headsets like the original Quest! So you either own a Quest 2, or you're out of luck.
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It seems like Amazon just can't catch a break when it comes to video game development. New World has been pushed back time and time again, the team-based shooter Crucible was shut down just recently, and now it looks like the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMORPG is no more.
As for the reason for the cancellation, that's where things get interesting. The Lord of the Rings MMORPG was being developed by Amazon Games Studios and the China-based Leyou Technologies, the latter of which ended up getting purchased by Tencent in late 2020. While the details get a little bit murky here, it seems that there was a major disagreement between the companies on how to proceed, and so the whole project eventually ended up getting shut down.
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[Update]: The Experimental Update has now gone live without changes, though Blizzard did add some developer commentary to help shed light on some of the stranger tweaks.
Now that the Archives 2021 event is no longer hogging all of the spotlight, Blizzard has unleashed another interesting Experimental Update. It might not be quite as bombastic as some of the previous one, but I feel like the update still has a great deal of potential to make the current meta even better.
As for what exactly Blizzard is testing, and which heroes are getting slapped by the nerf-bat, that you can find out right below. Here's the full list of the experimental changes:
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[Update #2]: First part of Minecraft's colossal Caves & Cliffs update has now brought in some very angry goats.
After sprucing up the Nether and bringing in a whole bunch of quality-of-life features, Mojang has set their sights on improving another set of commonly visited locations - caves & cliffs. While this might sound like a simple enough ordeal, the task has ended up being so complex and involved that Mojang has now decided to split the update into two.
The first part (1.17) will release at some point this summer. In terms of content, Update 1.17 will focus primarily on adding new mobs, items and blocks. As such, you can expect to see a variety of things like goats, axolotls, crystals, spyglasses, geodes, tinted glass, copper, lightning rods, and a bunch of other fun stuff.
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[Update #2]: Inspired by Strixhaven's Mystical Archives, MTG Arena's The Brother's War expansion will be launching on November 15th with a bunch of classic artifacts in tow.
[Update]: MTG Arena's Dungeons & Dragons inspired expansion is arriving on July 8, 2021.
After a full month of previews and teasers, MTG Arena's newest expansion Strixhaven has now finally arrived. It brings with it a whole host of new cards to play around with, almost all of which are heavily spell-focused and themed after the five magical colleges: Lorehold (Red/White), Prismari (Blue/Red), Quandrix (Green/Blue), Silverquill (Black/White), and Witherbloom (Black/Green).
If you're wondering just what these cards are like, as well as what sort of playstyle each of the colleges is going for, you can find your answers over at the Strixhaven card gallery. Wizards of the Coast has nicely sorted them out by color, so it should be fairly easy to figure out what's going on.
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[Update]: Shadowlands' very first major content patch will be landing at the end of June.
While Anima is not directly tied to power like Battle for Azeroth's Azerite, it still plays a major role when it comes to upgrading your Covenant hideout and purchasing an assortment of cosmetics. However, despite the costs being incredibly high across the board, getting any significant quantities of Anima has been incredibly difficult all throughout Shadowlands, even after Blizzard buffed some of the dungeon rewards.
With all of that in mind, you'll be pleased to hear that Blizzard has now finally listened and increased the amount of Anima you gain from completing world quests! However, in true World of Warcraft fashion, it's not a simple numerical buff but a whole new system to keep an eye out for.
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[Update #2]: The long-awaited NieR: Automata patch will be landing on July 15, 2021!
[Update]: NieR Replicant remaster has now landed onto PC, thought not without some technical issues.
If you would hop over to the Steam page for NieR: Automata you would see a bit of a shocking sight - an overwhelmingly negative review score. One of the reasons for this is that despite the Steam version suffering from annoying bugs for four years now, neither Square Enix nor PlatinumGames have done much to fix the problems.
The second, and more currently relevant reason, is that the newly launched Xbox Game Pass version of NieR: Automata has brought with it a whole bunch of technical improvements. Unfortunately, none of the changes have made their way to Steam, which as you might imagine, hasn't exactly gone over well with people that have been eagerly awaiting some fixes for many years at this point.
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[Update]: Hearthstone's Voyage to the Sunken City expansion is bringing in some truly gigantic creatures.
The Forged in the Barrens expansion arrived a little while ago, bringing with it the long-requested Classic Mode alongside a whole host of fun new cards. Unfortunately, things didn't remain entertaining for long as some of the new cards, in combination with old cards rotating, created an environment where only Paladins, Mages and Rogues could find any sort of success.
So in order to sort this whole mess out, Blizzard has now released a brand new update. Mage's Deck of Lunacy has gone up to 4 mana cost, Paladin's secret-spewing Sword of the Fallen has lost 1 durability, while the always-annoying Pen Flinger has now been changed to only target minions!
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[Update]: The newest update has now fleshed out all of the Nordic countries!
Ever since Microsoft Flight Simulator launched the developers have slowly but surely been fleshing out the already massive world map with new monuments, airports and points of interest. The latest in this series of updates, the humbly named World Update IV, has now arrived with a whole bunch of new things to explore in France, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg.
You can expect to see far more detailed locations in Paris and Amsterdam thanks to improved aerial images and high-resolution 3D photogrammetry, three new hand-crafted airports (Megève, Nice and Rotterdam), as well as a whole host of new points of interests and minor airports sprinkled throughout the whole area.