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[Update]: Apex Legends' Season 14 has now arrived alongside a sizable balance and quality-of-life focused update.
If you're looking for an excuse to dive back into Apex Legends, the Season 14 - Hunted update seems like a pretty good one. Once it arrives this August 9th it'll bring with it a new long-range focused Legend Vantage, rework Kings Canyon in order to address many of the community criticisms, increase the level cap so even veterans can earn new rewards, and as is tradition, add the usual batch of improvements and cosmetics.
Since she's the definite highlight of the update, allow me to share with you a brief rundown of Vantage's abilities, as well as what they look like in action. First things first, she'll have three unique abilities at her disposal, one of which is passive:
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[Update]: The August 23rd patch will buff up many of the long-forgotten builds and specializations. Additionally, the August 23rd patch will see Guild Wars 2 launch onto Steam alongside a brand new set of achievement-based armor.
If you're looking for something to help pass the time, or just fill up your coffers, you'll be happy to hear that Guild Wars 2's Festival of the Four Winds has now returned. It brings with it the Labyrinthine Cliffs and Crown Pavilion maps to mess around with, both of which have a variety of events and races to participate in, as well as fancy loot to unlock.
Personally, I'd highly recommend heading over to the Crown Pavilion and giving the Queen's Gauntlet a try. It's essentially a series of increasingly more difficult boss fights for you to tackle, and while they haven't exactly kept up with the rise in player power, the bosses are still a really fun set of challenges to overcome, especially the last few!
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[Update #2]: Immortal Empires has now been unleashed alongside Total War: Warhammer 3's biggest update ever!
[Update]: The latest preview offers a close-up look at the Immortal Empires campaign map and some of the new Legendary Lord positions.
As a part of the August 23rd update, Total War: Warhammer 3 will receive a gigantic batch of new content. This includes the Immortal Empires combined campaign map, a rework of the often-forgotten Warriors of Chaos faction, numerous buffs for some of Total War: Warhammer 2's lords, as well as the very first post-launch DLC bringing with it four new Chaos champions to mess around with.
During the last week's preview Creative Assembly showed off Nurgle's disturbingly happy plague doctor Festus the Leechlord, and now it's time for the equally disturbing Vilitch the Curseling and his freshly reforged Tzeentch forces. You can check out what all of them look like in action through two of the trailers below, starting with the brief cinematic short:
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[Update #2]: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous' The Lord of Nothing DLC has added 15 new archetypes and a lengthy side-story to explore.
[Update]: After that brief delay, The Treasure of The Midnight Isles has now been unleashed!
The Treasure of The Midnight Isles is Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous upcoming DLC that will be playable as a part of the main game's campaign or as a standalone roguelike mode. As you might imagine given the whole 'roguelike' thing, The Treasure of The Midnight Isles will let you explore a vast array of builds and party compositions, acquire all sorts of magical items and consumables, fight against scores of old and new enemies, as well as slowly but surely uncover the secrets of the Abyss... and the treasures it holds!
If that sounds like your type of adventure, I'm afraid you're going to have to wait a little while longer before you can dive in. According to Owlcat Games' developer update, The Treasure of The Midnight Isles has now been pushed back from August 11th to August 30th.
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[Update]: Dota 2's hotly anticipated Patch 7.32 has now arrived with a brand new lane creep and tons of changes!
If you're itching for a bit of a meta shake up, or at least a couple of tweaks to some of the heroes, you'll be happy to hear that Dota 2's next big update has now been announced. No exact release date has been given just yet, but Patch 7.32 will be launching before The International Regional Qualifiers which will run from September 3 - 18, so I'm expect it to arrive in late August.
Similarly, and this should come as no surprise given that this is Valve we're talking about, not a single change has been revealed just yet. Still, I think it's safe to say that overplayed heroes like Zeus are most likely going to get some nerfs flung their way, while somewhat mediocre ones like poor ol' Primal Beast might get a helping hand. I certainly hope that's the case as it's always sad to see a brand new hero completely vanish from the meta.
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[Update]: The Gladiator format has now arrived alongside a sizable rebalance of the Baldur's Gate draft!
In order to help pass the time until the next premier set releases in September, MTG Arena will be launching a spotlight event for the community-made format called Gladiator. The event will run from August 11th to August 15th and will give you a chance to play around with either your own creations or ten pre-made competitive decks.
The rules of the Gladiator format are fairly simple: decks must contain no fewer than 100 cards and no sideboards, with a maximum of one copy of each card other than basic lands. Matches are then played in the best-of-three format, though without any sort of sideboarding between games.
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After a brief round of teasers, IO Interactive have now unleashed a sizable new update for Hitman 3. It brings with it a variety of fixes and enhancements, including stability improvements across all platforms, as well as a brand new map to explore and most likely ransack - Ambrose Island. Best of all, the whole thing is entirely free!
What this looks like in actual gameplay, as well as what the new storyline is all about, that you can find out through two of the previews below. Have a gander, starting with the cinematic intro:
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Turtle Rock Studios, developers of Left 4 Dead and Back 4 Blood, originally launched their 4v1 shooter Evolve back in 2015. Unfortunately, due to some gameplay and monetization issues, Evolve never managed to catch on and secure itself a sizable playerbase. As a last ditch effort Turtle Rock Studios released Evolve: Stage 2 as a free-to-play game, though once again, things didn't go well and the servers were ultimately shut down in 2018.
This is usually where the story would end, but in a refreshing little twist, Evolve: Stage 2 has now been given another chance! Thanks to a recent update, peer-to-peer servers and parts of the matchmaking system have now been restored, thus enabling players to jump into matches without too much hassle.
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[Update]: After two years of updates, Grounded has now finally been unleashed from Early Access!
After two years in Early Access and a whole bunch of updates, Obsidian's backyard survival game Grounded is finally getting ready to be released in full. You can expect to see Version 1.0 arrive on September 27th for PC and Xbox alongside a sizable update.
The exact details are still few and far between, but the launch version will bring with it the upper yard as a brand new region to explore, along with the usual batch of new armor and weapon recipes to play around with. There will also be numerous new secrets to uncover, one which will be a seemingly nasty endgame boss - the Mantis.
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[Update #2]: The August 23rd patch will buff up many of the long-forgotten builds and specializations. Additionally, the August 23rd patch will see Guild Wars 2 launch onto Steam alongside a brand new set of achievement-based armor.
[Update]: The balance changes have now arrived alongside the Festival of the Four Winds.
As a part of the June update, Guild Wars 2 brought in a whole bunch of balance changes to pretty much every aspect of gameplay. While some of these ended up working out well and created more viable builds for certain classes to play around with, others were a complete failure and only ended up making the affected specializations almost undesirable in endgame content.
So in order to fix some of these problems, ArenaNet is planning a new balance update for August 2nd. This one will be focused primarily on getting the Mesmer's Chronomancer specialization back up to par, both in terms of damage and support options, as well as reworking the incredibly tedious Warrior banners.