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Total War: Three Kingdoms will be heading over to PC this March 6th with what appears to be a sizable list of features. Diplomacy will be getting reworked from the ground up, actions in battle will have an effect on your heroes and their relationships, there will be realistic and Dynasty Warriors inspired game modes, espionage will be getting a variety of improvements, and the list goes on.
If you're wondering how all of this translates into gameplay, allow me to share with you the recently posted developer preview showing off what it takes to build an empire. Have a gander, it's a pretty interesting video:
February's Humble Monthly offers Vermintide 2, Earth Defense Force 4.1 and Cultist Simulator for $12
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If you're looking for something to pass the time while we're still stuck in the "your brain will freeze if you go outside" weather, you might want to check out February's Humble Monthly bundle. For $12 it offers the excellent Vermintide 2, the incredibly cheesy Earth Defense Force 4.1, as well as the surprisingly captivating Cultist Simulator. And as an additional bonus, once the next month rolls around you'll get a couple of extra games as well.
As you might imagine given my review of Vermintide 2, I would highly, highly recommend you pick up this bundle. Both Vermintide 2 and Cultist Simulator are brilliant games in their own right, while Earth Defense Force 4.1 is somewhat niche, albeit still rather entertaining if you're willing to turn off your brain and just enjoy the mindless shooty action. I think Verminitide 2 alone is worth the $12, so if you're even remotely interested, make sure to give the bundle a closer look.
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MTG Arena finally added a ranked play mode a little while ago, though unfortunately the developers made it so only best-of-one games counted for your progression. This meant that, much like Hearthstone, the best decks to climb the ladder with were ones that were so aggressive they would either win or lose in a couple of turns. Not exactly ideal for a competitive mode.
As such, I am very happy to say that the latest update has now also added best-of-three matchmaking. This not only makes surprise tactics a lot less relevant, but due to the presence of a 15-card sideboard, you can now also adapt your deck to each opponent so hard-counters are less of an issue. However, if you don't like best-of-three games, or you simply don't have the time to play them, worry not as the best-of-one mode will not be going anywhere! Best-of-three is merely an additional option.
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[Update]: Team Sonic Racing has now made its way to both PC and consoles.
Team Sonic Racing will be coming to PC and consoles this May 21st, bringing with it fifteen Sonic characters to play around with, as well as a variety of tracks, powerups and tricks to help spice things up. It is being developed by Sumo Digital, the studio behind the truly excellent Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed kart game, so unless something goes terribly wrong, chances are that Team Sonic Racing will end up being pretty darn enjoyable.
While the recently posted trailer unfortunately doesn't showcase much in terms of straight up gameplay, it'll give you a pretty decent idea of the sort of characters and tracks you'll be able to mess around with. Have a gander:
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If you've completed all of the mainline Assassin's Creed games and you're looking for a little bit more, you might be interested to hear that Ubisoft is currently giving away Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China. Simply head on over to the Ubisoft store, grab yourself a copy, and after a brief download you'll be able to slice and dice your way through ancient China.
The only catch, as you might imagine, is that this giveaway is time-limited. As such, you'll have to grab Assassin's Creed Chronicles: China before February 5th, though once you have it unlocked you'll be able to play it at any point.
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[Update]: Artifact 2.0 has been announced. There aren't many details just yet, but there will be a beta soon!
Valve's card game Artifact is in a bit of an unfortunate spot right now. Despite launching with some pretty respectable numbers, it has rather quickly deteriorated to the point where it averages less than two thousand players at any one moment. Whether this is due to the in-game economy, balance problems, lack of features or a combination of all three, I have no idea, but it's becoming quite apparent that Artifact will need a lot of work in order to live up to its potential.
With that in mind, I am glad to say that Valve has now released yet another balance patch, as well as a briefly stated that they are "still in it for the long haul" with Artifact. In classic Valve tradition they didn't exactly elaborate what their plans for Artifact are, but I can only hope they'll manage to turn the ship around like they've already done with the early version of CS:GO.
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A little while ago Overwatch's Jeff Kaplan announced that they have a bunch of new content coming in the near future. As you're most likely aware, he really wasn't joking given that over the past few weeks Overwatch received a nice variety of updates. The Lunar New Year event added numerous new and old skins to collect, the Ana Bastet challenge offered a fancy new cosmetic alongside a short story, while the most recent balance update finally brought in some much-needed nerfs to the tank-heavy support lineups.
Given the Overwatch team's relative silence after the event's launch I assumed that was 'it' for the time being, but thankfully it would appear that I was quite wrong as the Overwatch PTR has just been updated with a brand new Assault map set in Paris! I won't pretend I'm exactly happy to see yet another choke-heavy Assault map, but if nothing else, the new Paris map really is beautiful to look at!
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[Update #2]: Metro Exodus is now removing the somewhat controversial Denuvo Anti-Tamper technology.
[Update]: Metro Exodus will be coming back to Steam on February 15th, one day after the exclusivity deal expires.
The Epic Games Store released a little while ago with two major positives to its name: noticeably higher revenue sharing for developers, and a free game every two weeks for the rest of us. That alone would be enough to make most people at least check it out, but then Epic decided to take things a step further by offering developers seemingly large sums of money in exchange for a year-long exclusivity period.
The latest in this list of exclusives, as you can probably guess from the title, is the soon-to-be-released Metro Exodus. All current pre-orders (both digital and physical) will still contain a Steam key as previously promised, and will still be able to grab all of the possible expansions and DLCs as normal. Any future purchases on PC, however, will need to be done on the Epic Games Store until the exclusivity deal expires on February 14th, 2020.
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Overwatch's third annual Lunar New Year event has now arrived for PC and consoles, bringing with it a variety of new and old cosmetics to collect, competitive capture-the-flag to help bolster your supply of Competitive Points, as well as some pretty darn impactful balance changes.
You'll find all of the details over at the official website, but if you're just interested in the short version, allow me to share with you the most relevant balance changes. Have a peek, they're quite an interesting bunch:
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[Update]: Subnautica: Below Zero has now launched from Early Access, and without any sort of major technical issues!
Unknown Worlds announced back in August that they are working on a chilling standalone expansion - Subnautica: Below Zero. As you might expect from the name alone, the upcoming expansion will offer a brand new storyline set in the Subnautica universe, and will take place in the ice-bound region of planet 4546B after the events of the first game. Other than those little tidbits of information, however, we are almost entirely in the dark about Subnautica: Below Zero.
With that in mind, I am very glad to say that Unknown Worlds has now come out to announce that Subnautica: Below Zero will be heading to Early Access next week, on January 30th! The initial version is expected to be both unpolished and lacking in content, so if do decide to grab it as soon as it becomes available, make sure you're doing so with the intent of providing the developers with some much-needed feedback. Personally, I'd recommend waiting until the game is fully finished as that will give you the best possible experience, but I can definitely understand why some of you might be tempted to get in there as soon as possible.