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A few months have passed since Europa Universalis IV's Cradle of Civilization expansion, and already Paradox is back with a brand new expansion pack. As you might expect from the title alone, the newly added Rule Britannia DLC has brought with it a bunch of content and changes to further flesh out the British Isles, as well as some minor improvements to the other countries.
What this means in gameplay terms is that you can expect to see new British missions, rewards for being the first nation to unlock new knowledge, new naval doctrines to help you in both times of peace and war, Anglicanism as a new Protestant faith, as well as the ability to essentially tax every trade your defeated enemies do. There's also new army designs for British and Irish nations, new music, as well as an option to share knowledge with your allies in order to get them up to speed.
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Warhammer: Vermintide 2, a game I found myself reviewing quite positively, launched on March 8th with a large amount of bugs in tow, a significant portion of which have by now been fixed because Fatshark has managed to issue four major updates in less than two weeks! The latest Update 1.0.4. has finally fixed the various crashes and bugs surrounding the Skittergate level, made the Burblespue Halescourge boss fight much more manageable, as well as removed the completely random and completely insane difficulty spikes across all skill levels.
The Skittergate changes are mostly just bug fixes, though there are a couple of minor nerfs to the final boss as it simply spawned too many Elite enemies to reliably contend with. A similar change has happened with Mr. Burblespue as well, though he has also received a variety of nerfs to his spells in order to make them actually avoidable by dodging. As a result, both maps are now significantly more enjoyable to play, especially on Legend difficulty where even a single 'free' hit from a boss is usually enough to ruin someone's day.
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After being available in Japan for a couple of days now, Attack on Titan 2 has finally made its way to the West as well. It has brought with it improved visuals and performance, tweaked controls, a reworked dodging mechanic, a roster of new characters (including playable Titans), as well as a brand new storyline focused around the show's second season.
If you're wondering how exactly all of this translates into gameplay, allow me to share with you the recently posted launch trailer. It's fairly brief, but it should get the point across quite nicely. Have a look:
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While NIS America seems to be having immense trouble getting the upcoming YS VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana to behave, XSEED Games have slowly but surely been porting the majority of the series over to PC. Their latest project, as you can probably guess from the title alone, is Ys: Memories of Celceta which originally launched for the PS Vita in 2013.
The PC remaster will arrive at some point this Summer, bringing with it support for a variety of resolutions, unlocked frame rate, fully customizable controls, as well as the ability to play with a keyboard and mouse combo. There will also be a new Boss Rush game mode to challenge yourself against, as well as some more currently unannounced features. While that might be a bit too cryptic for my tastes, XSEED's Ys ports have all been stellar so far, and as such it's highly likely that Ys: Memories of Celceta will be another quality one as well.
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After the incredible success of not only the HD remake of the original TY the Tasmanian Tiger but also its sequel TY the Tasmanian Tiger 2, Khrome Studios have now returned to give the third game in the series the same treatment. Much like its two predecessors, TY3 will be spending a couple of months in Steam Early Access in order to iron out bugs and potential issues, add new content and polish, as well as improve all of the art and textures.
You can get a good look at what the newly remastered visuals are like in-game, as well as what the gameplay is all about, through the recently posted trailer down below. Have a gander, it's a short but rather nostalgic trip:
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Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time is a 3D action-RPG with some beat'em up elements thrown in for good measure. While it will feature most of the characters from the series, the Chamber of Time will be its own self-contained storyline, and as such it should be welcoming to both new players and seasoned fans alike.
The Chamber of Time released in Japan back in November of 2017 to some generally positive reviews, while the Western version has just pinned for a May 15th launch on both PC and PS4. I can't tell you much about how faithful the Chamber of Time is to the show since that I haven't watched it, but the recently posted into cinematic should hopefully give you a bit of an idea. Have a look, it's quite a colorful video:
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HTC has just announced that the Vive Pro HMD (Head Mounted Display) will be coming this April at a $800 price tag, while the base version of the current Vive is going down to $500. The pre-orders have already begun, so if you're interested make sure to head on over to the official website. All orders for the Vive Pro HMD will begin shipping globally on April 5th, but if you decide to purchase it before June 3rd you will also be given a six-month subscription to Viveport, a service that grants you five games of your choice each month.
Before you do anything, however, it is worth mentioning that the Vive Pro HMD will not include the controllers or base stations. If you currently own a Vive this should be absolutely no problem since you already have everything you need, but everyone else will have to purchase them separately which is going to add quite a lot of spice to the already flaming price.
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[Update]: Overprime is a third-person MOBA heavily based on Epic's long-canceled Paragon.
A little while ago Epic Games announced that their MOBA Paragon will be closing down its doors on April 26th. While they graciously offered a full refund to all players, I still found myself lamenting the fact that all of those high quality character models, environments and special effects will essentially be going to waste.
Thankfully, Epic has now decided to correct that huge problem in the best way possible - by releasing all of assets onto the Unreal Marketplace for absolutely no cost! So if you ever wanted to experiment with Paragon's characters, you now have a chance to do just that as each bundle contains a character's model, their animations, as well as their unique skins.
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Surviving Mars is a sci-fi city builder that will have you attempt to not only colonize Mars, but also create a fully self-sufficient settlement. In order to do so you'll need to build drones and infrastructure, research new technologies and ways to upgrade your settlement, cultivate your own food, establish a mining outpost, and perhaps most importantly, try to do all of that while keeping your colonists alive throughout the whole process.
This might sound similar to other city-building games such as Cities: Skylines, but there is one very big difference and that is the fact that Surviving Mars takes place on, you guessed it, Mars! So while you won't be trying to solve traffic jams, you will need to ensure that your colony does not encounter critical failures, especially multiple times in a row. After all, even something as simple as a blackout could result in massive casualties since your life-support system is incapable of running on hopes and dreams.
Heroes of the Storm's next character is going to be an incredibly persistent Protoss Dragoon - Fenix
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While he ended up being slightly overshadowed by Tassadar's heroic sacrifice, Fenix is one of the coolest characters that came out of StarCraft's Protoss campaigns. I mean, there's not that many 'people' that can boast about needing to be killed twice before they would actually stay down for good!
With that in mind, I am delighted to say that Fenix will soon be joining Heroes of the Storm as an incredibly durable and persistent Protoss Dragoon. You can check out his abilities, as well as what he looks like in-game, through the recently posted preview down below. Have a look, it's quite an interesting video: