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[Update #2]: Nearly a decade after its original announcement, Dead Island 2 has now finally been unleashed.
[Update]: Dead Island 2 is not only alive, but it's also finally launching on February 3rd, 2023 for PC and consoles!
With all of the recent news about Dying Light 2, the previously announced yet still mysterious Dead Island 2 came into the public's eye once more. Dead Island 2 was originally announced in 2014 and was supposed to release in 2015, though unfortunately it ran into some development issues and was postponed time and time again.
We've heard very little about Dead Island 2 since then, which as you might imagine led to a lot of people simply writing the entire game off, but according to one of the recent tweets from the official Dead Island Twitter account the game is still in development! The devs haven't shared any additional information, but according to the tweet they're keeping Dead Island 2 under wraps until it's ready for the spotlight. Probably a very good idea given that it's bound to be heavily scrutinized due its troubled development and the lengthy wait.
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While I'm still uncertain why they're doing so, I am very glad to say that Blizzard has begun taking Warcraft 3 quite seriously. In the previous Update 1.29 they introduced support for modern resolutions, the ability to play custom games with up to 24 players, better matchmaking, an improved World Editor, and naturally, a whole bunch of balance changes.
As is tradition for any multiplayer game, the latest round of balance changes quickly introduced new problems and revealed long-forgotten flaws. In order to correct these issues, as well as bring all four races as close together as possible in regards to balance, Blizzard has now released Update 1.30 onto the PTR (Public Test Realm).
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[Update]: Steam has now released the list of best selling and most popular games of 2019, and I'm very happy to say that things are looking even better than in 2018!
The massive Steam Summer Sale has now come and gone, and as is somewhat of a tradition, Valve has released the list of the best selling games of 2018. While I'm sure it won't come as much of a surprise to hear that AAA juggernauts like Far Cry 5 and GTA 5 are near the top of the list, it might come as a bit of a shock to hear that quite a few of the top selling games are from indie studios of various sizes!
Some of them might not be 'true' indie games, but I'm still quite glad to announce that Vermintide 2, Rocket League, Warframe and Kingdom Come: Deliverance have secured themselves a spot among the highly exclusive "Platinum" bracket. The exact numbers haven't been released, but I can give you a bit of context through Vermintide 2.
During its first two weeks it managed to sell around a million copies and secured more revenue than the original Vermintide in its entire lifespan. And that is for a game with absolutely no microtransactions and DLC, so I'll leave it to your imagination to figure out just how successful Vermintide 2 (and the rest of the Platinum group) have ended up being!
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With Slay the Spire's third and final pre-release character now fairly nicely balanced, the developers have turned to adding new content and polishing things up for launch. With that in mind, I'm sure it won't come as much of a surprise to hear that the most recent update has added a bunch of new Relics, a new event, and naturally, a couple of balance changes.
Besides the new Relics, one of the most important changes in this update is the simple fact that the third Relic sold by the merchant is now always a shop Relic. There are five new shop Relics in total so you won't be able to consistently get the ones you want, but it's still something you can potentially plan your deck strategy around.
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[Update #2]: A brand new Crash Bandicoot game has been announced!
[Update]: Vicarious Visions are now working on remastered versions of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 and 2!
The Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, as you might guess from the name alone, contains remastered versions of all three classic Crash Bandicoot games. You can expect to see a variety of visual improvements, support for modern resolutions and keyboard/mouse input, re-recorded dialogue and a reworked soundtrack, a time trial mode for all three games, as well as some minor tweaks to the jumping mechanics across all three games.
It is a whole bunch of new features, and a whole bunch of areas to potentially make a critical mistake in, which is why I'm very happy to say that the PC port of the N. Sane Trilogy is extremely good! The controls are tight and there don't appear to be any bugs or glitches, so if you are itching to give the new and improved Crash Bandicoot a try, the PC version is definitely worth grabbing.
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While MTG Arena is a pretty darn enjoyable card game, it definitely suffers when it comes to its in-game economy and the 'new player experience' as a whole. Right now, if you're not willing to pay you're going to have to play for an absurdly long time before you can acquire a decent collection. Not exactly ideal, for both the players and MTG Arena itself.
With that in mind, I am very glad to announce that the upcoming July 12th update will attempt to correct exactly these issues. There are currently no patch notes available, but you can get a pretty good overview of the changes by checking out the most recent developer update down below. Have a look:
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During the recent Overwatch PTR update Sombra received some rather interesting changes. Both her Stealth and Translocator abilities now last indefinitely, though in order to compensate for that boost in power both abilities also received a small nerf - Stealth is now 25% slower and enemies can detect you from 2 meters further, while the Translocator itself became both audible and destructible.
On paper these changes don't sound like a terrible deal, but as it turns out, they left Sombra a lot weaker than where she started from. As such, I am very glad to announce that the Overwatch devs are doing a second round of balance tweaks. Here's what's being changed:
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Path of Exile's most recent Incursion league has brought in a whole bunch of interesting changes and additions, the most notable of which is the new Temple which essentially allows you to craft and fine-tune your very own dungeon. And what better way to expand upon the concept than by adding two new rooms (each with two additional upgrades) filled with treasures to plunder!
In the Tormented Cells you will find Tormented Spirits, enemies that will attempt to possess a nearby foe in order to enhance their damage, and perhaps more importantly, the amount of loot they drop. Once upgraded the Tormented Cells will contain a large number of spirits, spirits that you can then lure to the boss in order to create a rather difficult challenge, though also one that is going to spew out loot all over the place... if you can manage to avoid dying anyway!
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The Humble Monthly is a $12 subscription service that instantly gives you access to a couple of games, and then a whole bunch more once the next month rolls over. The quality of these games tends to be all over the place, and the same applies to this month's bundle as the three highlighted games are a rather strange pairing: Hearts of Iron IV, Blackwake, and Portal Knights.
I've only played Hearts of Iron IV out of this bunch, and for what its worth I do believe it's enough to carry the entire bundle on its own, provided you're into hardcore grand strategy games anyway. As for the rest, I'm afraid I know very little besides the fact that they have a positive review score on Steam. So before you spring for your wallet, I would highly recommend doing a bit of research.
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The Crew 2 is an open-world racing game where you can explore a scaled-down recreation of the United States with a variety of vehicles such as cars, airplanes, boats, and so forth. If that sounds like the type of racing game you'd love to mess around with, you might be interested to hear that The Crew 2 has now arrived on both PC and consoles.
Since trying to explain racing games through words alone is a bit of a futile task, allow me to share with you one of the recent developer streams. The video is fairly lengthy, but if you just skip around you should get a pretty good idea of what The Crew 2 is really all about. Here's the video: