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Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, as you might expect from the name alone, is a standalone version of The Witcher 3's endlessly addictive minigame. It features all of the same strategies and intrigue, but with actual balance, less overpowered dragons, and a whole bunch of new cards to toy around with.
If you haven't given it a try, now would be a good time to sign up for the Closed Beta as Gwent has just recently been updated with not only the new Nilfgaard faction, but also a bunch of extra cards as well! As for what exactly Nilfgaard brings to the table, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to hear that they are focused entirely around control, treachery, and using the enemy's strength against them. If you want to see all of this in video form, but also get a brief look at all of the other factions, here's the most recent "Factions in Gwent" trailer:
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In what might just be the most bizarre crossover this year, the card game Shadowverse has announced that they will be adding Street Fighter characters as alternate leaders. According to Famitsu Ryu is going to represent Dragoncraft, Juri Runecraft, Cammy Forestcraft, Chun Li Swordcraft, Karin Heavencraft, Vega Bloodcraft, and naturally, M.Bison is going to be the face of Shadowcraft.
If you're wondering what this sort of madness might look like in action, here's the recently posted announcement trailer. Its entirely in Japanese so I'm afraid I can't give you more information than that, but its still well worth checking out given how ridiculous all of it truly is. Anyway, here's the video:
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In an announcement that I must admit comes as a massive surprise, MrXLink from the Skylords community has come out to say that EA has given them the greenlight to revive the card game/RTS hybrid BattleForge. Most importantly, EA has also given the newly created Ardent Peak team the rights to commercialize the game to a point, so you can expect to see more content in the form of cards and maps in the distant future. With all of that said, don't expect to see much in terms of new content until the team is happy with how the servers are set up and running.
Why exactly EA would do this, I have absolutely no idea, but I certainly do hope this is an example other companies will follow in the future. It really is horribly depressing to see perfectly good games get axed because they aren't bringing in much of a profit anymore, even though the community would be more than ready to take over all server duties in order to keep the lights running for as long as there is interest.
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NieR: Automata is Platinum Games' upcoming action RPG with a heavy focus on precision strikes and well-timed dodges. It it set to arrive on March 7th in North America and March 10th in Europe and Australia, though its still unknown whether the PC and PS4 versions will be launching at the same time. That said, Square Enix has never mentioned any delays for the PC version either, so I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.
If you're wondering what NieR: Automata's story is going to all be about, here's the most recent trailer to hopefully enlighten you. I haven't played the original NieR so none of this made any sense to me, but the Youtube comments sure are excited about various numbers and letters, so I might just be the odd one out here. Anyway, have a look:
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One of the things that initially caught my attention with Conan Exiles was the full support of not only community servers, but also user created mods. Because let's face it, survival games tend to have a plethora of issues that make continuous play more annoying than it needs to be, which is exactly where mods can come in to save the day.
While the server customization was available since day one, the Dev Kit has been withheld for a little while in order to iron out all of the kinks. As you can probably guess from the title, it is being withheld no longer, so if you ever wanted to create mods for Conan Exiles you now have a chance to do so. Just do bear in mind that you will need to download the Unreal Launcher in order to access the Dev Kit.
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If you've become hooked on For Honor during the two previous 'beta' events, you'll be glad to hear to you won't have to wait for long before you dive in again. On February 14th, or more specifically at 9pm PST/6am CET, Ubisoft's medieval murderfest will finally be unleashed upon the world.
In order to drum up a bit of excitement, and also show tidbits of the singleplayer campaign, Ubisoft has recently posted the launch trailer... which then promptly bugged out and is currently unplayable. Thankfully the folks over at GameSpot have uploaded their own version, so you can still check it out while Ubisoft works out the kinks on their side. Have a look, there's even a random elephant in there somewhere:
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After first appearing in Street Fighter 3 as an assistant of Gill, Kolin will be joining Street Fighter 5's ever-expanding roster of characters on February 28th. As for her fighting style, Kolin is primarily focused around using the opponent's momentum against them, always ready to counter attack should an opportunity present itself. And she can also shoot ice out of her hands and feet... because why not!
If you're wondering about Kolin's backstory and her moveset, you'll find a brief overview in the recently posted reveal trailer down below. Have a look:
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Even though you probably won't notice this just by playing the game, but Overwatch has a surprisingly deep and interesting lore surrounding it. There are a couple of tidbits of information hidden throughout in-game dialogues, but most of the story is through either fancy cinematics such as the Genji vs Hanzo one, or through a variety of comics that focus on certain groups of characters. If you would like to give a couple of them a shot I would recommend checking out Old Soldiers featuring Reaper, Soldier 76 and Ana, as well as Reflections which showcases the tragic side of some of our 'heroes'.
The reason I'm mentioning all of this is because Overwatch will soon be getting another wave of story content, most likely spanning the entire year! The details are currently a bit scarce as all of this comes from a brief post by the Lead Writer Michael Chu, but its still exciting news nonetheless. Here's the full quote:
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I have expressed my love for Darkest Dungeon numerous times now, but with every single recommendation I also had to add a disclaimer: only grab it if you're willing to endure some truly painful grinding. Unless you're an expert that has previously beat then game there is simply no way you're going to crawl through the whole campaign without losing a fair share of your best followers, all of which will then need to be replaced through an annoyingly tedious process of leveling and stat-fiddling.
Thankfully, the most recent update has finally fixed this issue by adding a brand new game mode - Radiant Mode. In the most basic terms, Radiant Mode offers exactly the same challenging gameplay as the vanilla Darkest Dungeon, but with a couple of alterations to reduce mid and late game grind. You're still going to lose followers left and right, that's simply the nature of Darkest Dungeon, but there will be multiple ways to quickly get experienced recruits outfitted and ready to go.
If you're interested in all of the details you'll find the full patch notes over at Steam, but if you're just interested in the new Radiant Mode and freshly reworked New Game+ you can find all of the details down below:
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Creative Assembly recently opened up the beta for Terry, Total War: Warhamer's Battle Map Editor that allows you to create pretty much any type of battle map. It features all of the props and environment models from Total War: Warhammer, as well as a full library of SFX and VFX for you to toy around with. But most importantly, all of this is linked to the Steam Workshop so sharing and downloading user-created maps is going to be as easy as a single click of a button.
The only issue I had with the original announcement was the simple fact that user-created maps could only work in custom and multiplayer battles. In other words, you couldn't create new types of sieges and then put those into the campaign to spice up your playthrough. Well, according to the latest announcement, this is no longer the case!