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[Update]: The Shadow & The Blade DLC and its accompanying update have now arrived, and so far they have been quite amazing!
The Shadow & The Blade DLC will be coming to Total War: Warhammer 2 this December 12th with Malus Darkblade and Deathmaster Snikch in tow. However, as exciting as the DLC may be, it is the accompanying free update that will have the biggest impact on Total War: Warhammer 2 as a whole.
After spending months optimizing the code, Creative Assembly has managed to speed up end-turn times by well over sixty percent. Naturally, the amount of time you save each turn will greatly depend on the power of your CPU, but from all of the previews we've seen so far, the difference has been absolutely staggering! Best of all, this has been achieved without any shortcuts or sacrifices, so the whole campaign experience will remain pretty much exactly the same... just a lot faster.
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When Gwent first released things were looking a bit shaky as the balance was all over the place and CDPR still unsure about the direction they wanted to take the gameplay in. Luckily, instead of folding like so many card games before it, Gwent has overcome these initial hurdles and now settled into a rather nice position, both in terms of balance and content updates.
And what better way to continue that trend than with a brand new expansion, which is where the freshly revealed Merchants of Ofir comes into play! Here's a brief teaser showing what to expect:
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Despite having some pretty neat ideas and The Elder Scrolls tag behind it, it would appear that The Elder Scrolls: Legends has not managed to maintain a large enough playerbase to continue development. As such, I'm afraid that any future content releases have now been put on hold.
"Until then, you can still download and play Legends on all existing platforms and compete online as well as in the single-player modes," reads the official update. "We will also continue to support the game with monthly reward cards and regular in-game events. New expansions and other future content, however, are no longer under active development. We will continue to provide ongoing maintenance support."
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After Darksiders 3 ended up being a success, it was fairly obvious that Darksiders 4 will be following at some point in the future in order to tell the story of the final horseman - Strife. However, what might come as quite a surprise is that not only has Strife's game arrived far sooner than anyone could've expected, but that it's also a top-down, hack and slash spin-off with an option for co-op!
While that description can usually be read as "Diablo clone", it doesn't exactly apply here as the newly released Darksiders Genesis is pretty much a Darksiders game, just with a slightly different playstyle. You'll still be exploring the world in search of secrets, solving a variety of puzzles in order to open up new areas, collecting ability upgrades to help you smash through enemies, and naturally, beating up an assortment of demons and angels.
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[Update #2]: Halo 2: Anniversary is coming to PC this May 12th!
[Update]: Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary has now been added to the collection on PC.
If you're like me and you never really got to sink many hours into Halo 1 and 2 due to Games For Windows Live being a massive nuisance, I'm delighted to say that the dark days are now finally behind us. In other words, the significantly more compatible Halo: The Master Chief Collection has now made its way to PC and Steam!
The Master Chief Collection will eventually bring with it pretty much all of the mainline Halo games - Halo: Reach, Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, Halo 2: Anniversary, Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and Halo 4. However, as of right now, only Halo: Reach and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary are currently available.
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[Update:] Overwatch's massive shield rebalance and accompanying Winter Wonderland event have now arrived in full!
Right now Overwatch is in a bit of a slump as the current double shield meta doesn't allow much room for experimentation. There is a glimmer of hope on the horizon as the upcoming update is looking to finally address the overall balance between the tanks, though unfortunately the update has been stuck on the PTR for quite a while now.
Thankfully, this won't be the case for much longer as Blizzard has now announced that Update 1.43 will be coming to both PC and consoles next week. They haven't revealed the exact date just yet, but given that most updates arrive on a Tuesday, I think it's safe to say that Update 1.43 will be here on December 10th.
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Out of all the free-to-play games I've ever played, Apex Legends has surprisingly been the most stingy of them all. The amount of Apex Packs you could acquire by playing was severely limited, and unless you were particularly lucky, you would also end up at 'max' level without the ability to craft even a single quality skin. Not exactly ideal, to put it gently.
Thankfully, Respawn seems to have realized that it's probably a good idea to give players something interesting to chase after, and so the upcoming update will overhaul the level progression and rewards. The player level has been increased from 100 to 500, while the amount of Apex Packs you could earn has been increased from 45 to 199. As an added bonus, every 100 levels you will earn a Gun Charm which is essentially a small figurine you can dangle off your favorite weapons.
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If you're in the mood for a large-scale strategy game that emulates the oldschool XCOM, you might be interested to hear that Phoenix Point has now been released on PC. As you would expect given its inspiration, Phoenix Point features turn-based combat on procedurally generated maps, a whole bunch of deadly aliens you'll need to carefully dispatch from mission to mission, as well as the ability to manage every aspect of your base and the loadout of your soldiers.
You can get a pretty good idea of what all of this looks like in action, as well as get a Phoenix Point is really all about, through the recently posted developer tutorial series. Have a gander, it's a pretty long and detailed one:
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[Update]: Gearbox's team-based shooter Battleborn has now closed its doors for good.
Battleborn has not exactly had the best of luck. Despite being a pretty fun concept that could've been slowly developed into something great, Gearbox and 2K Games chose to directly compete with Overwatch, to the point that their release dates were almost neck and neck. And with Overwatch having a gigantic amount of hype behind it, Battleborn never really managed to get the momentum it needed in order to continue development.
Quite a while has past then, and with the Battleborn situation never really changing for the better, it shouldn't come as too much of a shock to hear that the Battleborn's servers will be closing down in 2021. Given Battleborn's always-online requirement, both the singleplayer and multiplayer modes will become completely unavailable at this point.
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[Update #2]: The Shadow & The Blade DLC and its accompanying update have now arrived, and so far they have been quite amazing!
[Update]: The patch notes for the free update accompanying the DLC have now been released, and apparently the turn-end times will be getting improved by up to 60%!
Total War: Warhammer 2's The Shadow & The Blade DLC is coming next week, bringing with it a variety of improvements to both the Skaven and Dark Elves. However, unlike the past few legendary lords, Malus Darkblade and his counterpart Deathmaster Snikch will not start in one of the currently available provinces, but rather in entirely new ones!
In other words, the southeastern part of the Mortal Empires map will be getting greatly expanded with the addition of the Dragon Isles, Gnoblar Country, Wolf Lands and surrounding territories. And with the presence of both Deathmaster Snikch and Malus Darkblade, this previously tame corner of the map is going to become a lot more competitive, especially now that both Kroq-Gar and Khalida no longer have an impenetrable wall at their back.