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[Update #2]: Vermintide 2's Chaos Wastes expansion will be launching this April 2021 on PC!
[Update]: Vermintide is celebrating its 5-year anniversary with a massive rat-slaying event.
While Vermintide 2 is a phenomenal game when you're out in the field slaying ratmen by the thousands, things quickly break down when you have to do any sort of item crafting. Not only is the process exceedingly random, but it's littered with so many unnecessary animations that you can end up spending 20 minutes just trying to get a pair of weapons up to standard.
Thankfully, this nightmare has now come to an end as the newly launched Patch 3.2 has brought in some awesome quality of life changes. For example, the end-of-round screen can now be skipped in order to get back into the action as quickly as possible, while the loot boxes themselves can now be rapidly opened and their animations almost entirely skipped.
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[Update #2]: Paradox's next big grand strategy game, Victoria 3, will be launching on October 25th.
[Update]: Crusader Kings 3 will be doubling the price of its smaller DLC packs on September 13th, 2022.
If you're in the mood for a bit of scheming, murder, treachery and occasionally pretending you're trying to actually rule a country, you'll be happy to hear that Crusader Kings 3 has now arrived. Much like it's predecessor, Crusader Kings 3 is a grand strategy game that allows you to follow one dynasty through the ages as they amass power, conquer new lands, and then lose it all in a series of increasingly ridiculous and 'fool-proof' maneuvers.
All of this does come with one rather major downside, the same one that follows all of Paradox's grand strategy games - the barrier to entry is quite high. Unless you have experience with the genre, it'll likely take you a fair few hours to get the hang of everything, and then even more hours before you can start going off-script and creating silly scenarios for yourself.
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[Update #2]: Assassin's Creed Valhalla has now arrived, and unsurprisingly, it's pretty good.
[Update]: Ubisoft has now detailed the PC system requirements for Assassin's Creed Valhalla.
While most games are being delayed these days due to the ongoing pandemic, Ubisoft has decided to take a bit of a different route with Assassin's Creed Valhalla. Instead of launching on November 17th as previously planned, Valhalla will be landing on November 10th alongside the Xbox Series X.
Naturally, this new release date includes all of the different versions. So regardless if you're planning to play on Xbox One or Series X, PlayStation 4, PC or even Google Stadia, Valhalla will be fully available on November 10th.
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[Update #2]: As a small holiday present, Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning has added a new Arena Mode.
[Update]: Fatesworn, Kingdoms of Amalur's first modern expansion, will launch on December 14th.
While not revolutionary by any stretch, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning was a remarkably enjoyable action RPG. It had the tendency to get repetitive after a while given that it was originally designed as an MMORPG, but if you could get past that, there was plenty of landmarks to discover and baddies to beat up.
If you've never given it a try and you're now curious what all of the fuss is about, you're in luck as the newly remastered version has just arrived. Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning brings with it improvements to the camera controls, a variety of bug fixes, slightly improved visuals, and from what I can tell, a bit of an overhaul of the original's difficulty curve. Needless to say, these aren't the biggest changes in the world, though thankfully Kingdoms of Amalur wasn't a game that required them either.
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[Update]: Path of Exile's latest update has now arrived with loot-filled vaults and daring heists.
Path of Exile's updates, especially the recent ones, are anything but predictable! Last time around Grinding Gear Games introduced farming (the plant kind) as a way of gathering new items and resources, while the upcoming patch is promising devious team-based heists on vaults filled with ancient treasures!
In the appropriately titled Heist update you'll need to first discover the location of a valuable artifact and the defenses that safeguard it. Once you have all of the details, you'll be able to hire skilled thieves and specialists in order to help you bypass the traps, avoid the patrols, and steal everything that isn't thoroughly nailed down!
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[Update]: Wasteland 3 update has improved loading times by up to 60% on PC.
Wasteland 3 has been in development for quite a few years now, with its original Fig crowdfunding campaign dating all the way back to October of 2016. If you've been with it since the very beginning, you'll be very happy to hear that the long wait is now finally over as Wasteland 3 has just recently made its way to PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Much like its predecessor, Wasteland 3 is a turn-based RPG that sports a variety of difficult and meaningful choices, both in and out of combat. Best of all, with plenty decisions to make and consequences that might not be immediately apparent, you won't really have to worry about saving and reloading constantly in order to get the 'most optimal' outcomes!
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[Update]: Horizon Zero Dawn PC Update 1.05 has fixed even more crashes and performance issues.
The PC version of Horizon Zero Dawn landed onto Steam a little while ago, and unfortunately it did so alongside a variety of issues. Not only was the performance spotty at the best of times, but there were also a whole bunch of annoying crashes and bugs to contend with, even during normal gameplay.
The developers quickly set out to fix these problems, and through the next few updates have managed to significantly improve the PC version. The newly released Patch 1.04 is no exception as it brings with it solutions for multiple crashes, performance improvements, and perhaps most importantly of all, a fix for the strange mouse sensitivity issues that have been around since day one.
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Due to the developers needing a little bit more time to get everything polished up and ready to go, Dirt 5's release date has recently been postponed until October 16th. Unfortunately, that estimate appears to have been far too optimistic as Dirt 5 has now been delayed once more, this time around until November 6th.
"It sucks, we know," reads the brief developer update. "Seriously, we can't thank everyone enough for your support and excitement around Dirt 5, ever since its reveal back in May. The start line is now a little further away, but it's still very much in sight."
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[Update]: Total War: Three Kingdoms devs have canceled all updates and are moving onto a new Total War game.
Now that Warhammer 2's DLC and the freshly released Troy have had their moment in the spotlight, it's time for the focus to shift back to Three Kingdoms and its new The Furious Wild DLC. As you might imagine from the name alone, The Furious Wild brings with the the southern Nanman tribes with their unique sets of units, campaign mechanics, sizable map area, and most importantly of all, a whole bunch of awesome-looking war animals!
You can get a pretty good impression of what all of this looks like in gameplay terms through two of the recent trailers. The first one is the announcement trailer that sets up the characters and shows off some of the units, while the second is a purely gameplay focused preview. Have a gander:
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[Update #2]: Shadowlands' animated shorts are here to introduce the four Covenants!
[Update]: World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion will allow secondary characters to skip the story bits!
World of Warcraft's Shadowlands expansion is set to launch this October 27th, and in order to celebrate its upcoming arrival, Blizzard is looking to give away a unique mount to all players. This won't be any random mount, however, but rather one out of five concepts voted by the WoW community!
While there is sadly no concept art showing off what these mounts might look like, their names are fairly descriptive and you should have an easy time figuring out just what the final product will look like. As for the mounts themselves, here's what's on offer: